advantages as well as its dangers. While on the one hand it tended to promote the unity of the empire, it degraded, on the other hand, the national character by the introduction of the impure cults which flourished along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.1

But, besides these forms of religion which were directly imported from foreign lands, there remained a stratum of local beliefs which even after twenty centuries of Christianity still flourish, discredited though they may be by priests and placed under the ban of the official creed. Thus in Greece, while the high gods of the divine race of Achilles and Agamemnon are forgotten, the Nereids, the Cyclopes and the Lamia still live in the faith of the peasants of Thessaly. So in modern Tuscany there is actually as much heathenism as catholicism, and they still believe in La Vecchia Religione "the old religion; "—and while on great occasions they have recourse to the priests, they use magic and witchcraft for all ordinary purposes."

It is part of the object of the following pages to show that in India the history of religious belief has been developed on similar lines. Everywhere we find that the great primal gods of Hinduism have suffered grievous degradation. Throughout the length and breadth of the Indian peninsula Brahma, the Creator, has hardly more than a couple of shrines specially dedicated to him. Indra has, as we shall see, become a vague weather deity, who rules the choirs of fairies in his heaven Indra-loka: Varuna, as Barun, has also become a degraded weather godling, and sailors worship their boat as his fetish when they commence a voyage. The worship of Agni survives in the fire sacrifice which has been specialized by the Agnihotri Brâhmans. Of Pushan and Ushas, Vâyu and the Maruts, hardly even the names survive, except among the small philosophical class of reformers who

1 On the assimilation by Rome of Celtic faiths, see Rhys, "Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom," 2 sq.

2 Lang, "Custom and Myth," 178.

3 Leland, "Etruscan Remains," 9.

4 At Pushkar and Idar. Monier Williams, " Brâhmanism and Hinduism," 566 sqq.

aim at restoring Vedism, a faith which is as dead as Jupiter or Aphrodite.

THE DEVA.

The general term for these great gods of Hinduism is Deva, or "the shining ones." Of these even the survivors have in the course of the development of the religious belief of the people suffered serious change. Modern Vaishnavism has little left of the original conception of the solar deity who in the Rig Veda strides in three steps through the seven regions of the universe, and envelops all things in the dust of his beams. To his cult has, in modern times, been added the erotic cycle of myths which centre round Krishna and Râdhâ and Rukminî. The successive Avatâras or incarnations mark the progressive development of the cultus which has absorbed in succession the totemistic or fetish worship of the tortoise, the boar, the fish and the man-lion. In the same way Rudra-Siva has annexed various faiths, many of which are probably of local origin, such as the worship of the bull and the linga. Durgâ-Devî, again, most likely is indebted to the same sources for the blood sacrifices which she loves in her forms of Kâlî, Bhawânî, Chandikâ or Bhairavî. A still later development is that of the foul mysteries of the Tantra and the Sâktis.

THE DEOTÂ.

But in the present survey of the popular, as contrasted with the official faith, we have little concern with these supremely powerful deities. They are the gods of the richer or higher classes, and to the ordinary peasant of Northern India are now little more than a name. He will, it is true, occasionally bow at their shrines; he will pour some water or lay some flowers on the images or fetish stones which are the special resting-places of these divinities or represent the productive powers of nature. But from time immemorial, when Brâhmanism had as yet not succeeded in occupying the land, his allegiance was bestowed on a class of deities

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of a much lower and more primitive kind. Their inferiority to the greater gods is marked in their title: they are Devatâ or Deotâ, "godlings," not "gods."

1

GODLINGS PURE AND IMPURE.

These godlings fall into two well marked classes-the pure" and the "impure." The former are, as a rule, served by priests of the Brâhman castes or one of the ascetic orders: their offerings are such things as are pure food to the Hindu -cakes of wheaten flour, particularly those which have been still further purified by intermixture with clarified butter (ghi), the most valued product of the sacred cow, washed rice (akshata) and sweetmeats. They are very generally worshipped on a Sunday, and the officiating high-caste priest accepts the offerings. The offerings to the "impure" godlings contain articles such as pork and spirits, which are abomination to the orthodox Hindu. In the Central Indian hills their priest is the Baiga, who rules the ghosts and demons of the village and is always drawn from one of the Drâvidian tribes. In the plain country the priest is a nonAryan Chamâr, Dusâdh, or even a sweeper or a Muhammadan Dafâli or drummer. No respectable Hindu will, it is needless to say, partake of a share of the food consecrated (prasad) to a hedge deity of this class. Much of the worship consists in offering of blood. But the jungle man or the village menial of the plains can seldom, except in an hour of grievous need, afford an expensive animal victim, and it is only when the village shrine has come under the patronage of the official priests of the orthodox faith, that the altar of the goddess reeks with gore, like those of the Devîs of Bindhâchal or Devi Pâtan.

But as regards the acceptance of a share of the offering the line is often not very rigidly drawn. As Mr. Ibbetson writing of the Panjab says: "Of course, the line cannot always be

2

1 Devatâ in Sanskrit properly means "the state or nature of a deity, divinity," without any very decided idea of inferiority. In modern usage it certainly has this implication.

2 "Panjâb Ethnography," 113.

drawn with precision, and Brâhmans will often consent to be fed in the name of a deity, while they will not take offerings made at his shrine, or will allow their girls, but not their boys, to accept the offering, as, if the girls die in consequence, it does not much matter." In fact, as we shall see later on, 7 the Baiga or devil priest of the aboriginal tribes, is gradually merging into the Ojha or meaner class of demon exorciser, who calls himself a Brâhman and performs the same functions for tribes of a somewhat higher social rank.

SURAJ NARAYAN, THE SUN GODLING.

The first and greatest of the "pure" godlings is Sûrya or Sûraj Nârâyan, the Sun godling. He is thus regarded as Nârâyana or Vishnu occupying the sun. A curiously primitive legend represents his father-in-law, Viswakarma, as placing the deity on his lathe and trimming away one-eighth of his effulgence, leaving only his feet. Out of the blazing fragments he welded the weapons of the gods. Sûrya was one of the great deities of the Vedic pantheon: he is called Prajapati or "lord of creatures:" he was the son of Dyaus, or the bright sky. Ushas, the dawn, was his wife, and he moves through the sky drawn by seven ruddy mares. His worship was perhaps originally connected with that of fire, but it is easy to understand how, under a tropical sky, the Indian peasant came to look on him as the lord of life and death, the bringer of plenty or of famine. If one interpretation of the rite be correct, the Holi festival is intended as a means of propitiating sunshine. He is now, however, like Helios in the Homeric mythology, looked on as only a godling, not a god, and even as a hero who had once lived and reigned on earth.

As far as the village worship of Sûraj Nârâyan goes, the assertion, which has sometimes been made, that no shrine has been erected in his honour is correct enough; and there is no doubt that images of Sûrya and Aditya are comparatively rare in recent epochs. But there are many noted temples dedicated to him, such as those at Taxila, Gwâlior, Gaya, Multân, Jaypur, and in the North-Western Provinces

at Indor, Hawalbâgh, Sûrya Bhîta and Lakhmipur.' His shrine at Kanârak in Orissa near that of Jagannâth, is described as one of the most exquisite memorials of Sunworship in existence. Mr. Bendall recently found in Nepâl an image dedicated to him as late as the eleventh century.3 There is a small shrine in his honour close to the Annapûrna temple in Benares, where the god is represented seated in a chariot drawn by seven horses, and is worshipped with the fire sacrifice (homa) in a building detached from the temple.*

In the time of Sankara Achârya (A.D. 1000) there were six distinct sects of Sun-worshippers-one worshipping the rising sun as identified with Brahma; the second the meridian sun as Siva; the third the setting sun as Vishnu ; the fourth worshippers of the sun in all the above phases as identified with the Trimurti; the fifth worshippers of the sun regarded as a material being in the form of a man with a golden beard and golden hair. Zealous members of this sect refused to eat anything in the morning till they had seen the sun rise. The last class worshipped an image of the sun formed in the mind. These spent all their time meditating on the sun, and were in the habit of branding circular representations of his disc on their foreheads, arms and breasts.

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The Saura sect worship Sûryapati as their special god. They wear a crystal necklace in his honour, abstain from eating salt on Sundays and on the days when the sun enters a sign of the zodiac. They make a frontal mark with red sandars, and nowadays have their headquarters in Oudh."

Another sect of Vaishnavas, the Nîmbârak, worship the sun in a modified form. Their name means "the sun in a Nîm tree" (Azidirachta Indica). The story of the sect runs

1 Cunningham," Archæological Reports," ii. 114, 342, 353; iii. 110, 112; xiii. 63; “Řâjputâna Gazetteer," ii. 160; Führer, "Monumental Antiquities," 6, 50, 145, 286.

2 Hunter, "Orissa," i. 188; Jarrett, " Aîn-i-Akbari,” ii. 128.

3 "Asiatic Quarterly Review," ii. 236.

4 Sherring, "Sacred City of the Hindus," 59, 157; Bholanâth Chandra, Travels," ii. 384.

Monier-Williams, " Brâhmanism and Hinduism," 342.

• Wilson, "Essays," ii. 384.