8. "Draw up the large bucket, and pour it out; let the streams pour forth freely! Soak heaven and earth with fatness! and let there be a good draught for the cows! 9. "O Par_g_anya, when roaring and thundering thou killest the evil-doers, then everything rejoices, whatever lives on earth. 10. "Thou hast sent rain, stop now! Thou hast made the deserts passable, thou hast made plants grow for food, and thou hast obtained praise from men." This is a Vedic hymn, and a very fair specimen of what these ancient hymns are. There is nothing very grand and poetical about them, and yet, I say, take thousands and thousands of people living in our villages, and depending on rain for their very life, and not many of them will be able to compose such a prayer for rain, even though three thousand years have passed over our heads since Par_g_anya was first invoked in India. Nor are these verses entirely without poetical conceptions and descriptions. Whoever has watched a real thunderstorm in a hot climate will recognize the truth of those quick sentences: "the winds blow, the lightnings fly, plants spring up, the hoofed cattle are scattered." Nor is the idea without a certain drastic reality, that Par_g_anya draws a bucket of water from his well in heaven, and pours out skin after skin (in which water was then carried) down upon the earth. There is even a moral sentiment perceptible in this hymn. "When the storms roar, and the lightnings flash and the rain pours down, even the guiltless trembles, and evil-doers are struck down." Here we clearly see that the poet did not look upon the storm simply as an outbreak of the violence of nature, but that he had a presentiment of a higher will and power which even the guiltless fears; for who, he seems to say, is entirely free from guilt? If now we ask again, Who is Par_g_anya? or What is Par_g_anya? we can answer that par_g_anya was meant originally for the cloud, so far as it gives rain; but as soon as the idea of a giver arose, the visible cloud became the outward appearance only, or the body of that giver, and the giver himself was somewhere else, we know not where. In some verses Par_g_anya seems to step into the place of Dyaus, the sky, and P_ri_thivî, the earth, is his wife. In other places,[241] however, he is the son of Dyaus or the sky, though no thought is given in that early stage to the fact that thus Par_g_anya might seem to be the husband of his mother. We saw that even the idea of Indra being the father of his own father did not startle the ancient poets beyond an exclamation that it was a very wonderful thing indeed.