History of Vedic Mythology

History of Vedic mythology occupies a very important position in the study of the history of religions. Its oldest source presents to us an earlier stage in the evolution of beliefs based on the personification and worship of natural phenomena, than any other literary monument of the world. To this oldest phase can be traced by uninterrupted development the germs of the religious beliefs of the great majority fo the modern Indians, the only branch of the Indo-Eruropean race in which its original nature worship has not been entirely supplanted many centures ago by a foreign monotheistic faith. The earliest stage of Vedic mythology is not so primitive as was at one time upposed, but it is sufficiently primitive to enable us to see clearly enough the process of personification by which natural phenonmena developed into gods, a process not apparent in other literatures; The mythology, no less than the language, is still transparent enough in many cases to show the connection both of the god and his name with a physical basis; nay, in several instance the anthropomorphism is only inci-pient. Thus usas, the dawsn, si also a goodess wearing but a thin veil of personification; and when agni, fire designates the god, the personality of the deity is thoroughly interprenetrated by the physical element.

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