James Darmesteter

“ He knows the place of the birds which fly in the air, he knows the ships which are sailing on the ocean, he knows the twelve months and what they will bring forth, he knows every creature that is born. He knows the path of the sublime wind in the heights, he knows who sits at the sacrifice. The God of stable laws, Varuna, has taken his place in his palace to be the universal king, the god with the wondrous intellect. ”

“ This is the Zeus of the philosophers, of the Stoics, of Cleanthes: but he was already the Zeus of the ancient poets. Powerful, omniscient, and just is the god of Æschylus, as that of Cleanthes: he is the king of kings, the blessed of the blessed, the sovereign power among all powers, the only one who is free among the gods, who is the master of the mightiest, who is subservient to no one's rule; above whom no one sits, no one to whom from below he looks with awe; every word of his is absolute ”

“ If the god of the heavens, greater in time and space, always present and everywhere present, easily rose to the supreme rank, carried there by his double infinity, yet others, with a less continuous, but more dramatic action, revealing themselves by sudden, unexpected events, maintained their ancient independence, and religious development might lead to their usurping the power of the king of the heavens. Already during the middle of the Vedic period, Indra, the noisy god of the storm, ascends the summit of the pantheon, and eclipses his majestic rival by the din of his resounding splendor. ”

“ As comparative grammar, on hearing the sister tongues, caught up the echo of the mother, whose voice they repeat, so comparative mythology in its turn, on looking at the sister religions, has tried to see through them the original image which they reflect. As the one restored the words and forms of the language which lived on the lips of the Aryans at the moment of the breaking up of the Aryan unity, the other endeavored to restore the gods and beliefs which lived in their souls at the moment when, with the unity of the race, the identity of language and belief passed away. ”

“ The dawn has never failed to appear at her appointed place in the morning, never forgotten where she is to appear again, nor the moment at which she is to reanimate the world. Darkness and light know their appointed hour, and always at the desired moment "the black one has given way to the white." ”

“ This god of the heavens, having organized the world, is all wisdom; he is the skilled artisan who has regulated the motion of the worlds. His wisdom is infinite, for of all those mysteries which man tries in vain to fathom he has the key, he is the author. But it is not only as the creator of the world that he is omniscient: he knows all things, because, being all light, he sees all things. In the naturalistic psychology of the Aryans, to see and to know, light and knowledge, eye and thought, are synonymous terms. With the Hindoos, Varuna is omniscient because he is the infinite light ”

“ Now, these gods who organize the world, rule it and watch over it; this Zeus, this Jupiter, this Varuna, this Ahura Mazda are not the personifications of a simple abstract conception; they emerge from a former naturalism, from which they are not yet quite detached; they commenced by being gods of the heavens.
Zeus and Jupiter have never ceased to be gods of the heavens, and to be conscious of it. When the world was shared among the gods, "Zeus received the boundless sky in the ether and the clouds for his share." ”

“ Like Zeus, and from the same cause, he gathers together the clouds, he turns the sack that contains the rains, and lets it loose upside down on the two worlds; he inundates the heaven and the earth, he clothes the mountains with a watery garb, and his blood-red eyes unceasingly furrow the watery dwelling with their twinkling flashes. ”

“ Should they let fall from the sky a golden chain on which all the gods and goddesses might be suspended, they still would be powerless, however hard they might strain to drag him from the heavens to the earth; and if it pleased him, he could draw them up even with the earth, even with the sea, and he would then fix the chain on the ridge of Olympus, and suspend on it the whole universe; so much is he above mankind, above the gods. Not only is he the most powerful, but also he is the wisest — the μητιέτης; he is all wisdom and he is likewise all justice. ”

“ What skilful artist has made the light and the darkness? What skilful workman has made sleep and wakefulness? Through whom have we dawn, noon, and night? From whom do they learn the law which is traced out for them? ”

“ So great in thy nature, king supreme above all things, no work is achieved without thee, neither on the earth, nor in the celestial regions of ether, nor on the sea, but those which the wicked accomplish in their folly. ”

“ Svarogu, the god of the ancient pagan Slavs, should no doubt equally be placed. Like Zeus, like Jupiter, like Varuna, like Ahura Mazda, he is the master of the universe, the gods are his children, and it is from him that they have received their functions; like them he is the god of the heavens, he is the thunderer, and like them he is the father of the fire, Svarojitchi, "the son of heaven." [14] ”

“ Zeus, Jupiter, Varuna, Ahura Mazda.
The Aryan gods are not organized as a republic: they have a king. There is over the gods a Supreme God.
Four of the Aryan mythologies have preserved a clear and precise notion of this conception: they are those of Greece, of Italy, of ancient India, and of ancient Persia. This Supreme God is called Zeus in Greece, Jupiter in Italy, Varuna in ancient India, Ahura Mazda in ancient Persia. Let us then listen to Zeus, to Jupiter, to Varuna, and to Ahura Mazda each in his turn. ”

“ In his omniscience are embraced all human actions. He watches over all things, and is far-seeing, and never sleeping. He is the infallible one; "it is impossible to deceive him, the Ahura, who knows all things." He sees man, and judges and chastises him, if he has not followed his law, for from him comes the law of man, as well as the law of the world ”

“ This is why the thunderbolt is his weapon, his attribute, "the thunderbolt with its never-tiring foot," which he hurls in the heights; why he rolls on a resounding chariot, brandishing in his hand the fiery trident, or dashing it on the wings of the eagle, or on Pegasus, the aërial steed of the lightning. ”

“ The two fertile sisters do not clash with one another; they never stop, dissimilar in form, but alike in spirit. Thus run the days with their suns, the nights with their stars, season following season. The sky has always in regular course ushered in by turn the day and the night. ”

“ What was the beginning of the good creation? Who is the father, who, at the beginning of time, begat order? Who has traced for the sun and the stars the paths that they must follow? Who makes the moon increase and decrease? ”

“ As he is the universal witness, he is also the universal judge, the infallible judge whom nothing escapes: none can deceive him, and from above he sees the evil done below and strikes it: he has sevenfold bands to clasp thrice round the liar by the upper, by the middle, and by the lower part of the body. ”

“ Thus did the Greeks, the Romans, and the Slavs allow their god to be vanquished by a foreign god; the Germans, the Lithuanians, and the Hindoos themselves forsook him for an inferior creation. Only in one single nation he finds worshippers faithful to the last They are not numerous, but they have not allowed their belief to be encroached upon either by time or by man. ”

“ Finally, he is the Father of Justice, Dike, "the terrible virgin who breathes out on crime anger and death," it is he who from hell raises vengeance with its slow chastisement against the bold wayward mortal. ”

“ Every characteristic common to the secondary religions will be legitimately referred to the primitive one, whenever it is essential — that is to say neither borrowed from one of the kindred religions nor due to an identical, but quite independent development. lf, for instance, the various Indo-European mythologies agree in naming the gods daiva, "the shining ones," it follows that in the primitive mythology, in the religion of the period of unity, they were known already as beings of light and called thus. ”

“ Socrates is not the disciple of the Psalmist; yet the heavens reveal to him, as to the Hebrew poet, the glory of the Lord. But if it be found that the abstract conception is closely connected with a naturalistic and material conception, and that the latter is identical in the four religions, as it is known, on the other hand, that these four religions have a common past, the hypothesis that this abstract conception is a heritage of this past, and not a creation of the present, may rise to a certainty. ”

“ They had, therefore, no other alternative than to attribute all to the gods, who made everything go according to their will, and it was in the sky that they placed the seat and domain of the gods, because it is there that may be seen revolve the night and the noon, the day and the gloomy planets of the night ”