The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris JastrowHopkins, Edward Washburn
Religion
The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris Jastrow
Hopkins, Edward Washburn
India -- Religion
It has been suggested that in the paradise of Yama over the mountains
there is a companion-piece to the hyperboreans, whose felicity is
described by Pindar. The nations that came from the north still kept
in legend a recollection of the land from whence they came. This
suggestion cannot, of course, be proved, but it is the most probable
explanation yet given of the first paradise to which the dead revert.
In the late Vedic period, when the souls of the dead were not supposed
to linger on earth with such pleasure as in the sky, Yama's abode is
raised to heaven. Later still, when to the Hindu the south was the
land of death, Yama's hall of judgment is again brought down to earth
and transferred to the 'southern district.'
The careful investigation of Scherman[19] leads essentially to the
same conception of Yama as that we have advocated. Scherman believes
that Yama was first a human figure, and was then elevated to, if not
identified with, the sun. Scherman's only error is in disputing the
generally-received opinion, one that is on the whole correct, that
Yama in the early period is a kindly sovereign, and in later times
becomes the dread king of horrible hells. Despite some testimony to
the contrary, part of which is late interpolation in the epic, this is
the antithesis which exists in the works of the respective periods.
The most important gods of the era of the Rig Veda we now have
reviewed. But before passing on to the next period it should be
noticed that no small number of beings remains who are of the air,
devilish, or of the earth, earthy. Like the demons that injure man by
restraining the rain in the clouds, so there are _bh[=u]ts_, ghosts,
spooks, and other lower powers, some malevolent, some good-natured,
who inhabit earth; whence demonology. There is, furthermore, a certain
chrematheism, as we have elsewhere[20] ventured to call it, which
pervades the Rig Veda, the worship of more or less personified things,
differing from pantheism in this,[21] that whereas pantheism assumes a
like divinity in all things, this kind of theism assumes that
everything (or anything) has a separate divinity, usually that which
is useful to the worshipper, as, the plough, the furrow, etc. In later
hymns these objects are generally of sacrificial nature, and the
stones with which _soma_ is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet
often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration.
Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings.
Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless
it is found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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