82 The Religion of the Veda

of comparative mythology. There was plenty of time for all Imtureavorsllip to have stiffened into more admiration, fear, and adulation of personal gods, accompanied inevitably by a more or less com- plete forgetfulness of the forces in nature from which sprang the gods. That. this was not so is due, in my opinion, to the vast: impressivenoss of lndia’s nature. Its fiercely glowing sun, its torrihlo yet life» giving monsoons, the snow-x’nountain giants of the north, and its bewilderineg profuse vegetation could hardly fail to keep obtruding themselves as a revo- lation of the powers of the already existing gods. What is still more important, it could hardly fail to stimulate the creation of new natureflgods to a de- gree unknown elsewhere. It is this unforgettng adherence to nature that has made the Vodie hymns the trainingsehool of the Science of Mythology, and to a large extent also of the Science of Religion. Deprived of the hymns of the Rig~Voda, we should hardly know to this day that mythology is the first and fundamental adjustment of the individual hu— man life to the outer active, interfering, dynamic world, which surrounds and influences man from the moment when he opens his eyes upon the wonders of its unexplained phenomena. In this sense Vedic mythology is in its day what empirical science is in our day.