mythology. That science was, in its dim beginnings, intended to
satisfy a moral need. Man found that his gods, when mythically
envisaged, were not made in his own moral image at its best, but in
the image sometimes of the beasts, sometimes of his own moral
nature at its very worst: in the likeness of robbers, wizards,
sorcerers, and adulterers. Now, it is impossible here to examine
minutely all systems of mythological interpretation. Every key has
been tried in this difficult lock; every cause of confusion has
been taken up and tested, deemed adequate, and finally rejected or
assigned a subordinate place. Probably the first attempts to shake
off the burden of religious horror at mythical impiety were made by
way of silent omission. Thus most of the foulest myths of early
India are absent, and presumably were left out, in the Rig-Veda.
"The religious sentiment of the hymns, already so elevated, has
discarded most of the tales which offended it, but has not
succeeded in discarding them all."[1] Just as the poets of the
Rig-Veda prefer to avoid the more offensive traditions about Indra
and Tvashtri, so Homer succeeds in avoiding the more grotesque and
puerile tales about his own gods.[2] The period of actual apology
comes later. Pindar declines, as we have seen, to accuse a god of
cannibalism. The Satapatha Brahmana invents a new story about the
slaying of Visvarupa. Not Indra, but Trita, says the Brahmana
apologetically, slew the three-headed son of Tvashtri. "Indra
assuredly was free from that sin, for he is a god," says the Indian
apologist.[3] Yet sins which to us appear far more monstrous than
the peccadillo of killing a three-headed Brahman are attributed
freely to Indra.


[1] Les Religions de l'Inde, Barth, p. 14. See also postea, "Indian