35.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_, p. 38.]
18
people as we find in the hymns were highly impressionable and
fresh. At this stage the time was not ripe enough for them to
accord a consistent and well-defined existence to the multitude
of gods nor to universalize them in a monotheistic creed. They
hypostatized unconsciously any force of nature that overawed
them or filled them with gratefulness and joy by its beneficent or
aesthetic character, and adored it. The deity which moved the devotion
or admiration of their mind was the most supreme for the
time. This peculiar trait of the Vedic hymns Max Muller has called
Henotheism or Kathenotheism: "a belief in single gods, each in turn
standing out as the highest. And since the gods are thought of
as specially ruling in their own spheres, the singers, in their special
concerns and desires, call most of all on that god to whom they
ascribe the most power in the matter,--to whose department if I
may say so, their wish belongs. This god alone is present to the mind
of the suppliant; with him for the time being is associated everything
that can be said of a divine being;--he is the highest, the only
god, before whom all others disappear, there being in this, however,
no offence or depreciation of any other god [Footnote ref 1].
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