India in Primitive Christianity

His legends being older, and not in Sanskrit, he has been neglected.—Found in India by the Aryans when they crossed the mountains—S’iva as the Cobra, and Durgâ as the Tree (pestilential Indian jungle) probably the oldest gods in the world.—S’iva as the Phenician Baal.—Esoterically a noble Pantheism fighting with the Polytheisms around.—The S’iva-Durgâ Cultus rises everywhere far above other religions, and also sinks lower. Invents the Yogi—and the Yoga philosophy.—Invents the Hypostases.—Great importance of Gaṇes’a in the history of civilisation.

As the Indian god S’iva has much to do with our present inquiry, first of all we must try to get a better knowledge of him. Professor Horace Hayman Wilson tells us that Saiva literature has been very little presented to the Hindus. The legends are not in Sanskrit.

From the earliest times the thunderstorm has been used to image God's voice and God's anger. We see Thor with his "hammer" knock down the enormous cloud-giant, Hrungner. In the First Book of Samuel, Yahve "thunders with a great thunder" and defeats the Philistine enemies of the chosen race. In Hesiod the "vaulted sky, the Mount Olympus, flashed with the terrible bolts" of Zeus in the Titan warfare. This symbolism naturally suggests itself when we look up to the "vaulted sky"; but in the Rig Veda it takes a different turn. Indra the Thunderer vanquishes his enemy Vritra, but often he seeks him in a "Cavern," a bottomless pit.

"He (Indra) has burst in the doors of that cavern where Vritra detained the waters shut up in his power. Indra has torn to pieces Suchna (Drought viewed as God) with his horns of menace."

"By him has been opened the bosom of that vault, yea, that vault without boundaries. Armed with the thunderbolt, Indra, the greatest of the Angiras, has forced the stable of the Celestial Cows."

That the chief god inimical to the Aryans was S’iva there can be no doubt. His special symbol is the Mahâdeo, and Dr. Muir has unearthed two passages of the Rig Veda that blurt out this truth brutally.

"May the glorious Indra triumph over hostile beings. Let not those whose god is the S’is’na approach our sacred ceremony."