Philology in Action—­Indra

As an example of the philological method with a Vedic god, take Indra.  I do not think that science is ever likely to find out the whole origins of any god.  Even if his name mean ‘sky,’ Dyaus, Zeus, we must ask what mode of conceiving ‘sky’ is original.  Was ‘sky’ thought of as a person, and, if so, as a savage or as a civilised person; as a god, sans phrase; as the inanimate visible vault of heaven; as a totem, or how?  Indra, like other gods, is apt to evade our observation, in his origins.  Mr. Max Muller asks, ‘what should we gain if we called Indra . . . a totem?’ Who does?  If we derive his name from the same root as ‘ind-u,’ raindrop, then ‘his starting-point was the rain’ (i. 131).  Roth preferred ‘idh,’ ‘indh,’ to kindle; and later, his taste and fancy led him to ‘ir,’ or ‘irv,’ to have power over.  He is variously regarded as god of ’bright firmament,’ of air, of thunderstorm personified, and so forth. {110} His name is not detected among other Aryan gods, and his birth may be after the ‘Aryan Separation’ (ii. 752).  But surely his name, even so, might have been carried to the Greeks?  This, at least, should not astonish Mr. Max Muller.  One had supposed that Dyaus and Zeus were separately developed, by peoples of India and Greece, from a common, pre-separation, Aryan root.  One had not imagined that the Greeks borrowed divine names from Sanskrit and from India.  But this, too, might happen! (ii. 506).  Mr. Max Muller asks, ’Why should not a cloud or air goddess of India, whether called Svara or Urvasi, have supplied the first germs from which [Greek] descended?’ Why not, indeed, if prehistoric Greeks were in touch with India?  I do not say they were not.  Why should not a Vedic or Sanskrit goddess of India supply the first germs of a Greek goddess? (ii. p. 506).  Why, because ’Greek gods have never been Vedic gods, but both Greek and Vedic gods have started from the same germs’ (ii. 429).  Our author has answered his own question, but he seems at intervals to suppose, contrary to his own principles, as I understand them, that Greek may be ‘derived from’ Vedic divine names, or, at least, divine names in Sanskrit.  All this is rather confusing.

Obscuring the Veda

If Indra is called ‘bull,’ that at first only meant ‘strong’ (ii. 209).  Yet ‘some very thoughtful scholars’ see traces of totemism in Indra! {111a} Mr. Max Muller thinks that this theory is ’obscuring the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent’ (America, it seems).  Indra is said to have been born from a cow, like the African Heitsi Eibib. {111b} There are unholy stories about Indra and rams.  But I for one, as I have said already, would never deny that these may be part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the Vedic hymnists.  Indra’s legend is rich in savage obscenities; they may, or may not, be survivals from savagery.  At all events one sees no reason why we should not freely compare parallel savageries, and why this should ‘obscure’ the Veda.  Comparisons are illuminating.