1. On the Gods of the Rigveda

Extract

After some preliminary remarks on the common origin of the Indians, Greeks, and Romans,—on the expectation thereby raised that we should find in the earliest literatures of these nations some remains of the primeval mythology which their ancestors must originally have possessed in common,—on the partial fulfilment of this expectation by an examination of these literatures,—and on the greater light thrown by the Rigveda than by any other monument of ancient poetry on the genesis of mythology,—the author adverts to the various theories of creation which would naturally be formed by simple men in the earlier ages of the world, to the manner in which the various great phenomena of nature would come to be ascribed to different deities, and to the diverse aspects in which the grander objects of creation, such as heaven and earth, were viewed, sometimes as inanimate, sometimes as animated and divine.