Vishnu & Shiva

[Guest guest]

Read this excellent extract from Secret of the Veda by Sri Aurobindo.

It is in answer to a comment I heard that Vishnu/Shiva werent

important figures in the Veda, & that "Shiva was added later on to

Hinduism from Drividians", something Ive heard more times than I want to:

 

It was a view long popularised by European scholars that

the greatness of Vishnu and Shiva in the Puranic theogonies was

a later development and that in the Veda these gods have a quite

minor position and are inferior to Indra and Agni. It has even

become a current opinion among many scholars that Shiva was

a later conception borrowed from the Dravidians and represents

a partial conquest of the Vedic religion by the indigenous culture

it had invaded. These errors arise inevitably as part of the total

misunderstanding of Vedic thought for which the old Brahmanic

ritualism is responsible and to which European scholarship by

the exaggeration of a minor and external element in the Vedic

mythology has only given a new and yet more misleading form.

 

The importance of the Vedic gods has not to be measured

by the number of hymns devoted to them or by the extent to

which they are invoked in the thoughts of the Rishis, but by

the functions which they perform. Agni and Indra to whom the

majority of the Vedic hymns are addressed, are not greater than

Vishnu and Rudra, but the functions which they fulfil in the

internal and external world were the most active, dominant and

directly effective for the psychological discipline of the ancient

Mystics; this alone is the reason of their predominance. The

Maruts, children of Rudra, are not divinities superior to their

fierce and mighty Father; but they have many hymns addressed

to them and are far more constantly mentioned in connection

with other gods, because the function they fulfilled was of a

con­stant and immediate importance in the Vedic discipline.

 

On the

other hand, Vishnu, Rudra, Brahmanaspati, the Vedic originals

of the later Puranic Triad, Vishnu-­Shiva-­Brahma, provide the

conditions of the Vedic work and assist it from behind the more

present and active gods, but are less close to it and in appearance

less continually concerned in its daily movements.