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2 Works of Pandit Guru Datta Vidyarthi
interposed — methods such as may throw further light upon the
subject.
To examine, then, the various methods that have up to this
time been pursued. Briefly speaking, they are three in number,
and may, for want of better denomination, be called the
Mythological, Antiquarian and Contemporary methods.
Firstly, the Mythological method. This method interprets
the Vedas as myths, as an embodiment of simple natural truths in
the imaginative language of religious fiction, as a symbolic
representation of the
actual
in the
ideal, as
an imbedding of primitive
truth in the super-incumbent strata of non-essential show and
ceremony. Now, in so far as this concretion of thought in
mythological network goes, it assumes a comparatively rude and
simple stage of human life and experience. From this basis of a
primitive savage state it gradually evolves the ideas of God and
religion, which no sooner done than mythic period ends. It further
argues thus:-- In the ruder stages of civilization, when laws of nature
are little known and but very little understood, analogy plays a
most important part in the performance of intellectual functions of
man. The slightest semblance, or visage of semblance, is enough
to justify the exercise of analogy. The most
palpable
of the forces of
nature impress the human mind, in such a period of rude beginnings
of human experience, by motions mainly. The wind blowing, the
fire burning, a stone falling, or a fruit dropping, affects the senses
essentially as moving. Now, throughout the range of conscious
exertion of muscular power,
will
precedes motion, and since even
the most grotesque experience of a savage in this world assumes
this knowledge, it is no great stretch of intellectual power to argue
that these natural forces also, to which the sensible motions are due,
are endowed with the faculty of will. The personification of the
forces of nature being thus effected, their deification soon follows.
The overwhelming potency, the unobstructible might, and often the
violence; with which, in the sight of a savage, the forces operate,
strike him with terror, awe and reverence. A sense of his own
weakness, humility and inferiority creeps over the savage mind
and, what was intellectually personified, becomes emotionally
deified. According to this view, the Vedas, undoubtedly books of
primitive times, consist of prayers from such an emotional character
addressed to the forces of nature including wind and rain—prayers