The Rig-Veda hymns abound in references to this feat; it will only be necessary to cite a few from among the numerous passages I have noted.

‘Thou hast set loose the seven rivers to flow.’

‘Thou causest water to flow on every side.’

‘Indra set free the waters.’

’Thou, Indra, hast slain Vritra by thy vigour, thou hast set free the rivers.’

’Thou hast slain the slumbering Ahi for the release of the waters, and hast marked out the channels of the all-delighting rivers.’

‘Indra has filled the rivers, he has inundated the dry land.’

’Indra has released the imprisoned waters to flow upon the earth.’[1]

It would be easy to fill pages with similar quotations, but these are sufficient for our purpose.

Among the Rig-Veda hymns are certain poems in Dialogue form, which from their curious and elliptic character have been the subject of much discussion among scholars.  Professor Oldenberg, in drawing attention to their peculiarities, had expressed his opinion that these poems were the remains of a distinct type of early Indian literature, where verses forming the central, and illuminating, point of a formal ceremonial recital had been ‘farced’ with illustrative and explanatory prose passages; the form of the verses being fixed, that of the prose being varied at the will of the reciter.[2]

This theory, which is technically known as the ‘Âkhyâna’ theory (as it derived its starting point from the discussion of the Suparnâkhyâna text), won considerable support, but was contested by M. Sylvain Lévi, who asserted that, in these hymns, we had the remains of the earliest, and oldest, Indian dramatic creations, the beginning of the Indian Drama; and that the fragments could only be satisfactorily interpreted from the point of view that they were intended to be spoken, not by a solitary reciter, but by two or more dramatis personae.[3]

J. Hertel (Der Ursprung des Indischen Dramas und Epos) went still further, and while accepting, and demonstrating, the justice of this interpretation of the ‘Dialogue’ poems, suggested a similar origin for certain ‘Monologues’ found in the same collection.[4]

Professor Leopold von Schroeder, in his extremely interesting volume, Mysterium und Mimus im Rig-Veda,[5] has given a popular and practical form to the results of these researches, by translating and publishing, with an explanatory study, a selection of these early ‘Culture’ Dramas, explaining the speeches, and placing them in the mouth of the respective actors to whom they were, presumably, assigned.  Professor von Schroeder holds the entire group to be linked together by one common intention, viz., the purpose of stimulating the processes of Nature, and of obtaining, as a result of what may be called a Ritual Culture Drama, an abundant return of the fruits of the earth.  The whole book is rich in parallels drawn from ancient and modern sources, and is of extraordinary interest to the Folk-lore student.