The Indian Theogony- A Comparative Study of Indian Mythology from the Vedas to the Puranas (An Old and Rare Book)

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ORTHODOX Indian religion contains much that must have been assimilated from primitive bases but Indian mythology as we have it has very little that is overtly or recognizably primitive. Hence theories of sociologists who worked in the field of primitive societies could not be applied to Indian religion and mythology without considerable modification and then only within a very limited scope. Because generations of mythographers have gone on adding, altering, selecting, rejecting, embellishing and 'modernizing' the myths, the traces of animism, totemism, manism or fetishism-so apparent in primitive myths-have been buried under the Indian material till there is hardly any obvious or incontrovertible evidence of these left. The ethnographer's approach to Indian religion will bear fruit only after much more investigation is done on the racial constituents of the Indian population and on the mythological correlative of their material experience. Even then, it is extremely doubtful whether it can yield any concrete or plausible results; first, because the necessary relationship between race and religion is now generally discredited, and secondly, because many of the ancient contributions of the various racial elements are now irretrievably lost in subsequent syncretism.

Two trends of research in the last two centuries had direct bearing on the exploration of Indian mythology-the social anthropological school of E. B. Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Levy Bruhl, Andrew Lang and E. Durkheim and the Indologists' school of Max Müller, J. J. Meyer and A. Bergaigne.1 The former carried on researches among primitive, tribal people and arrived at totemistic, animistic, manistic, fetishistic, solar, lunar or astral theories of the origin of myths. The latter, while subscribing to one or other of these theories, interpreted Indian myths relying chiefly on lin- guistic evidence. Coming to more recent time we again have two trends: the first represented by S. Freud, C. G. Jung, W. Schmidt, J. G. Frazer, Jane Harrison and S. H. Hooke, and the second by scholars like G. Dumezil, L. Renou, J. Gonda, H. Zimmer and A. Coomaraswamy. The first group drew their material from primitive and classical cultures and the second were primarily Indologists aware of the researches of social anthropologists.

THE present book is the result of ten years' work on the subject of the historical development of Indian mythology and its connection with parallel mythologies elsewhere, on which no satisfactory work exists in English. It was submitted as a doctoral thesis in 1964 in an earlier and different form. In 1966 Clare Hall, Cambridge offered me a Visiting Fellowship for the academic year 1966-7, thus making it possible for me to bring the material up to date. For the most part the book was prepared in India, where books on non-Indian mythologies and related subjects are comparatively few and difficult to procure. This naturally was a hindrance which was partly removed by my stay in Cambridge and I am thankful to Clare Hall for the generous offer of this opportunity. The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press kindly took an interest in the work and offered to publish it. In preparing the book for the Press I had Dr F. R. Allchin's unstinted cooperation and assistance. I can never be sufficiently grateful for the patience and thoroughness with which he went through the entire work and for his many valuable suggestions. I had long and frequent discussions with him at Churchill College which were invariably pleasant and profitable for me.

At the end of September 1967 I returned to India to my teaching post at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. Technical problems of all sorts cropped up when editorial work on the book began in the Press. Since I was no longer at Cambridge to deal with them a prolonged correspondence ensued with those who looked after the publication of the book. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to them; but for their patience the book would never have been published.

In the early stages of the work my teacher Dr Suniti Kumar Chatterji (National Professor of Humanities) helped me greatly by lending me books from his vast collection-books which are otherwise difficult to obtain here. I also learned much from discussions on allied sub- jects which I had with him from time to time. Dr Radhagovinda Basak encouraged me frequently when I despaired of ever finishing the work; the example of this venerable scholar was itself an inspiration. I am thankful to Prof. Giuseppe Tucci, one of the examiners of my thesis, for his extremely valuable suggestions for preparing the book for publication.