BENGALI WRITINGS

III. 1. The Secret of the Veda33the Dawn, the Night, the Wind and the Storm, Rivers, Streams,Sea, Mountains, Trees and such visible objects. Filled withawe at the sight of their fascinating movement, the barbariansadored these objects in their chants as poetical personalities.Again, seeing in them the conscious play of multipleGods, and wishing to establish friendly relations withthese Powers, they prayed to them for victory in battle,for prosperity, long life, health or children. Terrified by thedarkness of night, they performed rituals and sacrifices forrecovering the Sun. They were even afraid of ghosts andsolicited the gods in a piteous manner to drive them away.The hope and ambition of gaining heaven by offering sacrifices,and similar ideas, were in fact quite befitting thebarbarians of a prehistoric age.There is victory in the battle, but battle with whom?They say it is the war between the Aryan race which livedin the land of the five rivers, and the true Indians, the Dravidians;it is the constant fighting against the neighbouringpeople and the internal strife of the Aryans. The Europeansfollowed the method of the ancient Indian historianswho used to fabricate various historical episodes on theauthority of separate Riks and Suktas, with the differencethat instead of letting their imagination run riot and buildingup such extraordinary stories full of unnatural and strangeincidents as the death of a Brahmin youth crushed under thewheels of the chariot conducted by Jara (son of Jara), RishiVrisha, who is then recalled to life by the power of the mantra,and the theft of the force of Agni by some fiendish woman,they tried to reconstruct the ancient history of India with thehelp of such true or fanciful tales as the battle of the AryanTritsuraj Sudas against ten kings of mixed race, the priesthoodof Vasistha on one side and the priesthood of Vishwamitraon the other, the theft of cattle of the Aryans and theobstruction of the flow of their rivers by the cave-dwelling