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Men, gods and powers in the Vedic outlook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Karel Werner
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Extract

In the last century the Vedic pantheon served as the best illustration of the theory that the gods of primitive and archaic religions were personifications of natural phenomena. The gods of the Vedas were seen as more recognisably such than, for example, the Greek gods, who had acquired more elaborate anthropomorphic features through Homer's poetic skill, so that their supposed natuie-substratum was hardly or not at all detectable. In India the matter seemed clear. Thus Oldenberg believed that the Vedic gods were predominantly deified Naturwesen, agents behind the great happenings and processes of nature. Moreover, he maintained that different gods in the Vedas had reached different stages of anthropomorphism and independence from their nature basis and he made much of the job of determining this degree in individual cases.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 114 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 14 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1982

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References

NOTES

The following abbreviations are used in the present article:

BU Brhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad

HR History of Religions: an International Journal for Comparative Historical Studies. Chicago

JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society

Religion Journal of Religion and Religions. London

RV Ṛgveda

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32 ibid., 276–7.

33 “Sages”, “ascetics” and “wandering mendicants”.