ZBORNIK - Matica srpska

into any hierarchy. There is, of course, Zeus as the supreme force
among Olympians, but that matters little to the ordinary worshipper
who has to turn to the appropriate divinity as required by the nature
of his plaint. Even Zeus is viewed in many forms. For the Indians
even the supreme is a trinity and in Vedic lore the very question of
supremacy among gods did not arise. The hostility of the Greek
gods towards ardent devotees of rival gods is well-known. In the
Indian muthoi similar jealousies are not uncommon. Here, if the
worship of a god does not rouse the ire of another, the devotees of
different gods are often pitted against one another and each receives
help from his patron deity (ishtadeva). Gods are like superior heroes
patronizing inferior human supplicants. They must answer the call
of whosoever invokes them. A deity does not wait to measure the
merits or demerits of a devotee, justice in the end is not to be meted
out by him but by the all-seeing Zeus, or by dike itself, or by law
of karma.
In the classical Greek era and in India long before that in the
Upanishadic times, the universe was thought to be made up of five
elements earth, water, fire, air and ether (aither) orakasa. The genesis
of this idea was undoubtedly in India from where it travelled
to Greece through the Persians as a corollary to the doctrine of
Ayurveda. 20 In Greece it exercised the minds of all early Ionian
thinkers who tried to discover the primary one among the five.
Without going into details we may mention here that this division
into five elements is a method of relating the individual body to the
cosmic body or egg. The later Indian doctrine or 'yat pinde tat
brahmande' (that which is present in the body is also there in the
Universe), though stated a little later, had already been conceived
in, Purusa Sukta of Rigvedic Samhita. The five elements are a division
of the universal material made by the measure of five senses of
smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. It is through the five senses
that the individual (pinda) conceives of the universe and it is of
these five elements that the body is made of. This equation between
the microcosm and the macrocosm came to be established during
this time and it held its sway in the European world till Copernicus
and Newton replaced it with notions of modern physics. In the
cosmology of five elements man is not a fragmented creature but
part of the whole, he is in essence and value the same as the Universe.
The Greek belief in the five ages of man was stated only by
Hesiod and even though the notion that man has a declining history
continued to be entertained widely, Hesiod's demarcation into five
ages lost currency soon after. This belief was again an import from
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