e., those of the lightning, are spoken of as
kind friends. "Deliver us," says the poet, "from the snare of Varuna,
and guard us, as kind-hearted gods." One of the most remarkable of these
hymns is that addressed to the Unknown God. The poet says: "In the
beginning there arose the Golden Child. As soon as he was born he alone
was the lord of all that is. He established the earth and this heaven."
The hymn consists of ten stanzas, in which the Deity is celebrated as
the maker of the snowy mountains, the sea and the distant river, who
made fast the awful heaven, He who alone is God above all gods, before
whom heaven and earth stand trembling in their mind. Each stanza
concludes with the refrain, "Who is the God to whom we shall offer
sacrifice?"
We have in this hymn a most sublime conception of the Supreme Being, and
while there are many Vedic hymns whose tone is pantheistic and seems to
imply that the wild forces of nature are Gods who rule the world, this
hymn to the Unknown God is as purely monotheistic as a psalm of David,
and shows a spirit of religious awe as profound as any we find in the
Hebrew Scriptures.
It is very difficult to arrive at the true date of the Vedas. The word
Veda means knowledge, and is applied to unwritten literature. The Vedas
are therefore the oldest Sanscrit writings which exist, and stand in the
same class with regard to Hindoo literature as Homer does with regard to
Greek literature.
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