Who were Vedic Gods?

One or Many?

 There is a famous story in the Kandogya Upinsad of Sama Veda, VII Kanda in which a son who returned after studying all Vedas and he tried to impressed his father by orating what he had learned. The story tried to explain that the father felt that his son was sensing proud with the show of orating Vedas again and again.

To make his son realized that knowledge doesn’t have the essence of proving show; he asked his son to leave eating food and drinking water for next two days and then come to him to narrate the Vedas he has learned.

The son obeyed his father and remained fasting for two days and then came back to him. Then the father asked him to speak all four Vedas. The son only able to remember two Vedas which he learnt with great efforts and only narrated them, the father then again the son to continue the fasting for next two more days and return to him.

The son again obeyed and remained on total fasting and returned to his father who asked him to recites all Vedas. The story said that the son forgot all four Vedas and then the father said, “Mind my son comes from food, breath from water and speech from fire inside.”

There are confusions over the meaning of gods in Hindu religion and their importance. There is also debate on monism or pluralism of gods. The word Devas is taken in a literal meaning of deity, gods, lord and now almighty. But the Devtas or Devas were taken in the meaning of giver or who run the principles of Nature. Devtas are the term fixed for certain natural principles to understand how they work in the universe.

These Devas or Devtas were divided into three categories in which the highest Devas were who work in the space and outside the atmosphere of Earth. These are Sun (Surya), Sky (Mitra) Moon (Chandra) stars (Tara). The second Devas were who worked inside the atmosphere of earth and they are rain (Indra), thunder, air (Vayu) and the third category was the Devas that are on ground of earth and they were fire (Agni) and so on.

“The personified forces of nature first changed into real gods and these later on, became mere forms of one personal and transcendental god, the ‘custodian’ of the cosmic and moral order, who himself, later on, passed into the immanent Purusa” said Chandradhar Sharma in Critical Survey of Indian philosophy on Vedas.

He added that “Aryans, who were primitive, if not semi-civilized and semi-barbarous, settled down and began to wonder at the charming and the tempting and to fear the terrible and the destructive aspects of nature, they personified them in an anthropomorphic fashion and called them gods and goddesses and began to worship them.”

But M.N. Roy in Materialism stated, “The idea of one god, or a super god, becomes a social necessity as a spiritual sanction for the monarchic state rising on the ruins of tribal freedom, an over-lord in heaven is postulated as the sanction for an over-lord on earth.”

Basically the Aryans divided their gods according to their qualities and therefore Mitra- the sky, Varuna the dark sky, Surya- the sun, Asvinau- the dawn and dusk, Usha- the sun rays and the most important was Indra- the rains and the Maruiti -the wind, Rudra - the storm, Prithvi - the earth, “These gods were the first philosophy, the first attempt at explaining the wonders of nature” said Max Muller in Indian philosophy and three classes of Vedic Gods.

He again explained that, “It was not artificial or the work of one individual only, but was suggested by nature herself, earth, air, sky, or again morning, noon, and night, spring, summer and winter, are triads clearly visible in nature, and therefore, under different names and forms, mirrored in ancient mythology in every part of the world.”

But the Vedas alone cleared that these were the names and these names denotes power of the nature which is only one, “Ekam Sat Viprah Bahdha Vadanti, Agnim, Yamam, Mataruavbam ahuh (Sages called these in many ways but they are one, either called it Agni, Yama or Maruti).”

The Vedas definitely talked about the monism of the concept of god and introduced the term Prajapati- the king of people, Rig Veda X 121, 10 3, 9 & 10 “He who give life, he who gives strength, whose command all the brought gods’ revere, whose shadow is immortality and mortality, who is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifice.”

“May he not destroy us, he, the creator of the earth, or he, the righteous, who created the heaven, he who also created thee brought and mighty waters, who is the god to whom we should offer our sacrifices” “O! Prajapati, no other but thou has held together all these things, whatever we desire in sacrificing to thee nay that be ours, may we be the lords of wealth.”

Scholars wandered greatly and found that Vedas was not a work of a day or of a year but it was the continuous process of thinking, logic, observation and therefore the concept of Prajapati which was established after the notions of different gods termed on the bases of nature were again questioned.

The Rig Veda that established, first the power of nature with animated names and personified that some living being is doing this work like lightening in the sky and thundering and personified with the names and then later these different gods, working under one headship namely Prajapati who is the lord of lords.

The seers and thinkers of Vedas again questioned and found that these gods are not enough to satisfy the thrust of knowing and therefore they questioned again on such phenomena of nature, “As an ignorant and unaware in my mind, I ask for the hidden places of the gods, the sages in order to weave stretched the seven strings over the newborn calf. Not having discovered, I asked the sages who may have discovered, not knowing, in order to know, he who supported the six skies in the form of the unborn was he possibly that one,” Rig Veda I, 197,5 & 6

The Nasadiya Hymn again asked and put questions on the concept which was established by the seers about gods, “There was then neither what is nor what not (truth) is. There was neither sky nor the heaven which is beyond what covered? Where was it, and in whose shelter? Was the water the deep abyss in which it lay? There was no death hence was there nothing immortal. There was no light and even distinction between day and night. That one breathed by itself without breath, other than it there has been nothing. Darkness there was, in the beginning all this was a sea, without light, the germ that lay covered by the husk, that one was born by the power of heat (Tapas). 

Love overcomes it in the beginning which was the seed springing from mind; poets having searched in their heart and found by wisdom the bond of what is in what is not. Their ray which was stretch across was it below or was it above? There were seeds, because there was power, self power below and will above, who then knows, who has declared it here, from whence was born this creation, the gods came latter than this creation who then know whence it arose. He from whom the creation arose whether he made it or didn’t make it the highest seer in the highest heaven, he for sooth knows or does even he not know,” Nasadiya Hymans RVx 81 2 to 4.

It practically looks like proving that logic and reasoning was the base of such philosophy, especially Vedas are not simply documentary or code of mythology but an remarkable work that showed that reasoning and rationality existed that time which questioned the establish theories in the similar text. And Atharva Veda in IX, 5.30, said “Atama is what myself, my father, son, grandson, grandfather, wife, mother whoever is my dear I call upon them to magnify myself.”