Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 595

ETHER PERSONIFIED AS INDRA
555
such authorities had they not found in the writings of these
Platonic
philosophers expressions more precise,
less
in-
consistent, and less tainted with materialism than those to
be found in the Hindu books relating to Trimurti.
My readers have, no doubt, been astonished to find that
the element which some ancient Greek philosophers
considered to be the beginning and ending of everything
As a
created, has so far not figured in this discussion.
matter of fact, the Hindus go farther than the Greeks.
They recognize five elements, and the air is divided by them
into ether and wind, or, properly speaking, air, which is
personified under the name of Indra, the chief of the
inferior deities and the king of the ethereal regions, where
he dwells. The word Indra signifies the air in his domains
the winds blow according to his commands. In the Indra-
Indra is nothing else than
purana we find these words
The
the wind, and the wind is nothing else than Indra.'
wind by condensing the clouds produces lightning, which
He launches it against the
is the weapon of this deity.
and he is sometimes
giants, with whom he is often at war
The clouds, whose
victorious, sometimes vanquished.
various forms represent the giants, sometimes stop the
wind sometimes, on the other hand, the latter disperses
the clouds and rids the air of them.
This taste for allegory, which is inherent amongst all
people in rudimentary stages of civilization, has become in
the case of the Hindus an inexhaustible source of errors
In the earlier ages would-be com-
in matters of religion.
mentators, by interpreting in their own way ideas whose
original meaning had become obscured by lapse of time,
confused everything instead of making everything clear
and later their successors, wearied by attempts to explain
what seemed to them inexplicable, stuck to the literal
meaning, and thus revived the extravagant and barbarous
idolatry which forms the religious system of the modern
air,
;
'
:
;
;
;
Hindus.