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The lengthy series of rituals of the royal consecration, the rajasuya, emphasized royal power and endowed the king with a divine charisma, raising him, at least for the duration of the ceremony, to the status of a god. Typical of this period was the elaborate ashvamedha, the horse sacrifice, in which a consecrated horse was freed and allowed to wander at will for a year; it was always followed by the king’s troops, who defended it from all attack until it was brought back to the royal capital and sacrificed in a very complicated ritual.

Vedic cosmic-sacrificial speculations continued in the Aranyakas (“Books of the Forest”), which contain materials of two kinds: Brahmana-like discussions of rites not believed to be suitable for the village (hence the name “forest”) and continuing visions of the relationship between sacrifice, universe, and humanity. The word brahman—the creative power of the ritual utterances, which denotes the creativeness of the sacrifice and underlies ritual and, therefore, cosmic order—is prominent in these texts. Vedic religion Cosmogony and cosmology

Vedic literature contains different but not exclusive accounts of the origin of the universe. The simplest is that the creator built the universe with timber as a carpenter builds a house. Hence, there are many references to gods measuring the different worlds as parts of one edifice: atmosphere upon earth, heaven upon atmosphere. Creation may be viewed as procreation: the personified heaven, Dyaus, impregnates the earth goddess, Prithivi, with rain, causing crops to grow on her. Quite another myth is recorded in the last (10th) book of the Rigveda: the “Hymn of the Cosmic Man” (Purushasukta) explains that the universe was created out of the parts of the body of a single cosmic man (Purusha) when his body was offered at the primordial sacrifice. The four classes (varnas) of Indian society also came from his body: the priest (Brahman) emerging from the mouth, the warrior (Kshatriya) from the arms, the peasant (Vaishya) from the thighs, and the servant (Shudra) from the feet. The Purushasukta represents the beginning of a new phase in which the sacrifice became more important and elaborate as cosmological and social philosophies were constructed around it.

In the same book of the Rigveda, mythology begins to be transformed into philosophy; for example, “In the beginning was the nonexistent, from which the existent arose.” Even the reality of the nonexistent is questioned: “Then there was neither the nonexistent nor the existent.” Such cosmogonic speculations continue, particularly in the older Upanishads. Originally there was nothing at all, or Hunger, which then, to sate itself, created the world as its food. Alternatively, the creator creates himself in the universe by an act of self-recognition, self-formulation, or self-formation. Or the one creator grows “as big as a man and a woman embracing” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) and splits into man and woman, and in various transformations the couple create other creatures. In one of the last stages of this line of thought (Chandogya Upanishad), the following account became fundamental to the ontology of the philosophical schools of Vedanta: in the beginning was the Existent, or brahman, which, through heaven, earth, and atmosphere (the triadic space) and the three seasons of summer, rains, and harvest (the triadic time), produced the entire universe.

As indicated in these accounts, the Vedic texts generally regarded the universe as three layers of worlds (loka): heaven, atmosphere, and earth. Heaven is that part of the universe where the sun shines and is correlated with sun, fire, and ether; the atmosphere is that part of the sky between heaven and earth where the clouds insert themselves in the rainy season and is correlated with water and wind; earth, a flat disk, like a wheel, is here below as the “holder of treasure” (vasumdhara) and giver of food. In addition to this tripartite pattern, there is an ancient notion of duality in which heaven is masculine and father and earth is feminine and mother. Later texts present the conception that the universe was formed by combinations and permutations of five elements: ether-space (akasha), wind (vayu), fire (agni), water (apas), and earth (bhumi). Theology

Generally speaking, Vedic gods share many characteristics: several of them (Indra, Varuna, Vishnu) are said to have created the universe, set the sun in the sky, and propped apart heaven and earth. All the gods are susceptible to human praise. Some major gods were clearly personifications of natural phenomena, and these deities assumed no clearly delineated personalities.

The three most frequently invoked gods are Indra, Agni, and Soma. Indra, the foremost god of the Vedic pantheon, is a god of war and rain. Agni (a cognate of the Latin ignis) is the deified fire, particularly the fire of sacrifice, and Soma is the deified intoxicating or hallucinogenic drink of the sacrifice, or the plant from which it is pressed; neither is greatly personified.

Agni with characteristic symbol of the ram, wood carving; in the Guimet Museum, Paris.Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

The principal focus of Vedic literature is the sacrifice, which in its simplest form can be viewed as a ritualized banquet to which a god is invited to partake of a meal shared by the sacrificer and his priest. The invocations mention, often casually, the past exploits of the deity. The offered meal gives strength to the deity so that he may repeat his feats and give aid to the sacrificer.

The myth of Indra killing the dragon Vritra has many levels of meaning. Vritra prevents the monsoon rains from breaking. The monsoon is the greatest single factor in Indian agriculture, and thus the event celebrated in this myth impinges on every Indian’s life. In the social circles represented in the Rigveda, however, the myth is cast in a warrior mold, and the breaking of the monsoon is viewed as a cosmic battle. The entire monsoon complex is involved: Indra is the lord of the winds, the gales that accompany the monsoon; his weapons are lightning and thunderbolt, with which he lays Vritra low. To accomplish this feat, he must be strengthened with soma. Simultaneously, he is also the god of war and is invoked to defeat the non-Vedic dasyus, the indigenous peoples referred to in the Vedas. These important concerns—the promptness and abundance of the rains, success in warfare, and the conquest of the land—all find their focus in Indra, the king of the gods. Although he ceased being a major god as Hinduism incorporated Vedic tradition in the course of its development, Indra’s royal status as the king of the gods continued to be evoked even in areas influenced by India—for example, in dozens of lintels and temple carvings across Southeast Asia.

Because the Vedic gods were not fully anthropomorphic, their functions were subject to various applications and interpretations. In the view of the noble patrons of the Vedic poets, Indra, the greatest and most anthropomorphic god of the early Vedas, was primarily a warrior god who could be invoked to bring booty and victory. Agriculturalists and hunters emphasized Indra’s fecundity, celebrating his festivals to produce fertility, welfare, and happiness. Indra, however, was essentially a representative of useful force in nature and the cosmos; he was the great champion of an ordered and habitable world. His repeated victories over Vritra, the representative of obstruction and chaos, resulted in the separation of heaven and earth (the support of the former and the stabilization of the latter), the rise of the sun, and the release of the waters—in short, the organization of the universe.