The Dual Deities in the Religion of the Veda by J. GondaReview by: T. BurrowBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 38, No. 1(1975), pp. 171-173Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/614227 .

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REVIEWS 171 phrases, rather than words or sentences. The second considers the correlation between this punctuation and the phonology of the sentence: despite an obvious bearing on the history of Iranian and Vedic orthography, Adokan sandhi too has been largely ignored in the past.

The studies are identified as ix and x in the series 'Studien zu den Agoka-Inschriften'. An English version of ' Studien. . . , viii (1967-8) serves as introduction, and the new edition of KIl. RE I-X contained in ' Studien

.., v' (1965) is reprinted in an appendix.

Similar meticulous new editions of Sop. RE, Ahr., Calc., and Top. VII are provided, together with a new synoptic edition of the Pillars.

Three modes of punctuation are described: (i) haphazard rhetorical phrasing, as observed in most Pillars and the minor inscriptions; (ii) haphazard word-division, attempted most regularly in KIl. RE and Top. VII (e.g. .... Idja hevan

&dh. ... laja hevagmahd ... Idjdhe-

va. dhd . . .);

(iii) a total absence of punctuation, exceptional in the Pillars but usual in RE.

Janert suggests that the speech-habits of imperial emissaries and local copyists may be relevant (pp. 38 and 94). It is strange, however, to find the three modes treated without reference to the parallel developments of sandhi, Padapiitha, and Saphitdpdtha in Iranian and Vedic orthography.

At least parts of the Veda attest the same process. While Vedic Padapdtha and classical sandhi admit only yde'na, the RV Samhittpltha may contrast pida-initial ydnd-pdvaka, ydnd- nah, and ydni-nzi-kam with plda-initial ni- ydna mustihatydyd and post-caesura viddd-

ydna mndrma. This contrast between -d in sandhi and -a in pausa indicates a substratum of phrasing akin to the Agokan. The preserva- tion of original vowel lengths because of sandhi and the preservation of secondary vowel lengths despite sandhi which are observed in the inscriptions recur in Veda and Avesta and can hardly be regarded as a feature peculiar to the alleged circumstances of Agokan trans- mission.

It might have been helpful to attempt to distinguish two strata of sandhi:

(i a) rhetorical phrasing which is rooted in Indo-European accentuation and appears to be attested in all sources as a substratum (e.g. Nan. Pillar V ... hevam-dhh

.... now-eti na-ca-

khddiyati ajakd-ndni ... ; cf. the form piya- dasildjaha which may, on the evidence of their vocalism, underlie both (type ii) K&l. RE V piyadasi 1j& ah and (type iii) Top. Pillar VI

piyadasilajahevamnahi); and

(i b) rhetorical phrasing of a type which presages written sandhi but conflicts with accent and is nowhere consistently applied

(e.g. Nan. V ... avadhy&ni-kat.ni

... etdni-y- eva-divagsni ...).

The evolution of Padapittha (ii) and Samhittpdtha (iii) would inevitably have destroyed consistent sandhi, and the copyists seem to have no real understanding of the material. The Kl1. copyist is blind to the vowel-lengthening in pausa which is standard in his text, as is shown when he wrongly writes ivakapam as two words. In Top. VII, a composite text, an ancient sandhi (i a)

heva.mdh is maintained only during a dis-

cussion of Dharmavrddhi. Awkward peri- pheral matter, relating to the compilation of the corpus of seven edicts, uses a Padapdtha procedure: (ii) lajd hevam ihM... devdnampiye 5hM. The mock-classical sandhi (i b) lijdhevam is associated with an incapsulated and some- what ill-matched exposition of the Welfare State. The copyist at this stage has treated a case of (i a) hevamihi5 at an end of line as though hevam (although spaced) had to be compounded with tdj& at all costs, and as though the unspaced 5ha were a separate word; in the case of the material of type (ii), the spaces following the nouns have been greatly reduced in size.

It is hard to believe that for 50 years Hultzsch's explanation 'lengthened frequent- ly--often shortened' has been allowed to suffice as a description of Agokan sentence-phonology. The investigation, in K. L. Janert's hands, has proved remarkably rewarding.

Of the three inscriptions which are com- municated here adequately for the first time- the Ahraura minor rock edict and the SopdrA and Bombay RE-the last is particularly significant. It is a stone bowl bearing most of RE VII in Kharosthi. So far as the facsimiles permit judgement, it cannot derive from the ShTh. version but must share with it a common source. It is seen to agree with Sh&h. kirta- (Man. is read as kita-) but agrees, again correctly, with Man. sarvarA against Shah. savrant. As the second line seems to have been aligned with incidental punctuation-spaces and not with the beginning of the first line, the copyist is unlikely to have been capable of restoring correct readings.

J. C. WRIGHT

J. GON)A: The dual deities in the religion of the Veda. (Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akade- mie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letter- kunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel 81.) 416 pp. Amsterdam, London: North- Holland Publishing Co., 1974. Guilders 90. The common practice in the Vedic religion

of invoking the names of gods in pairs, and the

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172 REVIEWS

peculiar construction, known as devata-dvandva used in connexion with this, are matters which have received much attention from students of Indian religion and from grammarians. The grammatical construction is known also from ancient Iranian, and so may be traced back to the common Indo-Iranian stage, but its use in connexion with deities is in Iranian confined to the combination miOra ahura and its variant ahura miOra. It would seem therefore that although the ultimate origin of this system may be traced back to primitive Indo-Iranian times, the main development has taken place in the Vedic and pre-Vedic stage.

The dual deities of the Veda fall into several easily distinguishable classes. There are first the natural pairs of deified physical phenomena, namely Heaven-and-Earth, Sun-and-Moon, Day-and-Night, whose association is given to begin with. The twin deities, the Agvins, are in a class by themselves, both in respect of their being twins, and because they are not separa- tely named. Mitra and Varuna stand out because they are the deities most commonly and predominantly presented as a pair. Among the rest, combinations of the name of Indra with that of another god are the most common. Agni-and-Soma are rarely mentioned in the

R.gveda, but become prominent in the later

ritual literature. Professor Gonda's book contains an ex-

haustive study of all these paired deities both as they appear in the Rgveda, and as they are utilized in the later ritual. It contains a detailed examination and analysis of all the texts that are relevant to this subject in the Sarphitds, Brshmanas, and Sfitras. The em- phasis is on detailed description and analysis, and questions of origin and prehistoric develop- ment are rarely touched on.

In a long introductory chapter the status is examined of these dual deities who, though constituting pairs, are commonly treated as a unity, as is illustrated by the phraseology of the Brahmana texts in such phrases as agnisomau vai brlhmanasya 8va devata 'Agni- and-Soma are the Brahman's own deity' (p. 11). For this status Gonda uses the term ' dualit6-unit6 ', and goes to some length in examining its nature with ample reference to textual material. In order further to establish the nature of these conceptions in the general setting of Vedic thought considerable attention is devoted to what is said about pairs in general in the Vedic literature, and comparative evidence from a variety of sources is brought to bear on this. The AMvins, who for the reasons stated above are different from the normal pairs of gods, are treated in this introductory chapter, as are also a variety of combinations (Vataparjanyd, etc.) which do not very fre- quently occur. The chapter closes with a brief

glance at the survival of the dual deities in the later period. The traces of this are comparati- vely rare, and the conclusion is that 'the Vedic dual deities were, indeed, typically Vedic, whatever their origin and more or less similar counterparts in other religions and literatures. Supplying a need in the specu- lations and practices of the Vedic theologians and ritualists, they were closely associated with that ritual and obviously lacked that vitality and general popularity which could ensure their survival '.

The three succeeding chapters are devoted to the natural pairs, Heaven-and-Earth, Sun- and-Moon, and Dawn-and-Night. The first of these pairs has often been regarded as the prototype from which the system of dual divinities developed, but Gonda has no diffi- culty in showing that for this intuitive con- clusion no positive evidence can be found. It may perhaps also be significant that the com- paratively recent word prthivi ' earth ' appears normally in this compound, and that bhimi- and ksdm- only appear rarely as substitutes for it.

In dealing with Night-and-Dawn Gonda comes to the unexpected conclusion that ndkt- in this combination means 'the early part of the night, dusk', and that it is not, as is usually assumed, synonymous with rdtrf, meaning simply 'night '. The evidence adduced for this view is by no means con- vincing. The latter word is frequently used in contexts where the departure of night at dawn is spoken of, but it is no argument to say (p. 131) that 'the only place where the other word, ndkt-, is used in this connection is RV 7,71,1 ' (dpa 8vadsur usd8o nadg jihite 'Night runs away from her sister Dawn '), since this is the only place apart from the dvandva compound where this noun-stem is preserved. There is no doubt that the adverbial ndktam, which is preserved, means simply ' by night' in the general sense, and it occurs frequently in the combination divd ndktam ' by day and by night ' (cf. p. 132), so one must assume that the almost obsolete noun had the same sense. Night and Dawn come together at the end of the night and the beginning of the day, and it is their combination at this juncture which gave rise to the dvandva compound. It is only at this time that they can be asked to come as a pair and sit on the sacrificial strew (d ndkta barhih sadatam u4sde, 7, 42, 5). The relationship between the two words is simply that when the old IE word became obsolete it was replaced by the new word rdtrf, but the meanings are identical. The meeting at dawn of the two goddesses is also referred to in the hymn to Ritri, RV 10, 127, 3. nir u s8dsram askrta usdsage devy &yatt, dpdd u hiSate tdmah 'The goddess approaching has made an

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REVIEWS 173 appointment with (nir askrta, cf. niskrtd- 'appointment, rendezvous') her sister Dawn'. Whether the word is rdtri as here, or ndikt- as in 7, 71, 1, there is no difference in the meaning of the words, and the situation referred to is the same.

A long chapter is devoted to the most important of the dual deities, Mitra-and- Varuna. As regards Mitra, Gonda has already devoted a book to this subject (The Vedic god Mitra, Leiden, 1972), and what is said there is not as a general rule repeated here. The origin of this dual deity is discussed in some detail in this chapter, and also with great caution, stress being laid on the fragmentary nature of the evidence. In Iran Mithra appears as a great independent deity (subject to the Zoroastrian subordination of all Yazatas to Ahura Mazda), but his name appears in the devati-dvandva Mi0ra Ahura (Ahura Migra). Since, however, it cannot be demonstrated that the Ahura in this combination is ulti- mately to be equated with the Varuna of the Indian devati-dvandva, it is difficult to be sure what the significance of this is. Gonda, having discussed this and other problems in connexion with the origin of the divine pair Mitra and Varuia, comes to the following tentative con- clusion (p. 170). 'All things considered it would appear to me that there are good grounds for assuming that Mitra and another god already in prehistoric times formed an alliance of long standing. In view of the Mitanni data the probabilities are in favour of the supposition that in the prehistoric period of the Indo-Aryans the other god bore the name of Varuna at least since, say, 1400 B.C.

It is further a plausible hypothesis that more than most other dual deities of the Vedic pantheon this pair has a claim to a certain originality. That is to say, if we try to trace the origin of this peculiarity of that pantheon Mitrivarunau can by no means left out of consideration.'

The deity who figures in the largest number of such combinations is Indra, and the next four chapters are devoted to Indra-and-Viyu, Indra-and-Varuna, Indra-and-Agni, and Indra- and-Brhaspati respectively. The combination with V~yu is of particular interest in view of the great importance of V~yu in the Iranian religion. Gonda is very probably right in thinking that 'the supposition seems legiti- mate that the gradual increase in popularity of Indra in the Rgvedic age ... was not only detrimental to the cult and high position of Varuna, but also to those of some other gods, among whom V~yu'. The pair Indra-and- Brhaspati are to a large extent the celestial counterpart of the earthly king and his domestic priest. In discussing this pair Gonda takes issue with H. P. Schmidt, who recently

devoted a monograph to the subject (Brha8pati and Indra, Wiesbaden, 1968), and successfully demolishes the opinion of the latter that

B.Ahaspiti was originally no more than an

epithet of Indra. Further combinations of Indra with other deities are dealt with in the next two chapters, and the final chapter is devoted to Agni-and-Soma. This double deity is comparatively rarely mentioned in the

1.gveda, and therefore by some it has been

thought to be of later origin, a view which Gonda is somewhat loath to accept, while admitting that it is not possible to be certain by whom and under what circumstances, and at what period the combination was made.

The author has produced a standard work on this subject which in view of its exhaus- tiveness is unlikely to be superseded. He has also, in the course of the work discussed and interpreted many passages in the Vedic texts in such a way as to contribute to their under- standing. T. BURROW

B. L. OGIBENIN: Structure d'un mythe vidique: le mythe cosmogonique dans le Rgveda. (Approaches to Semiotics, 30.) 170 pp. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1973. Guilders 58. To begin, as the Indian logicians do, with

the argument one might expect from an opponent in debate: it might be argued that to apply structuralist techniques to the study of the Rgveda is to try to understand one difficult medium through another difficult medium, to compound one's intellectual pro- blems. Nobody presumes to understand all of Levi-Strauss; nobody claims to understand the

1.gveda; together, they are truly for-

midable. One might legitimately expect the structuralists to wait until the Rgveda is more thoroughly translated, understood word for word, before elaborate analyses of its contents are made. This is, however, unlikely to be accomplished in the near future; nor, indeed, must research necessarily proceed in that order. A scholar once accused his colleague of having too little Latin, saying, 'He gets the Latin from the meaning, not the meaning from the Latin'. All Vedists share this disability to some extent; we all have 'too little Vedic'; many of our most valuable insights into other- wise obscure terms have come from scholars who have seen what the meaning must be, from context, from an understanding of Vedic thought processes-in other words, by getting the Vedic from the meaning.

Structuralism is a particularly valuable tool in this respect, because it is primarily a lin- guistic discipline. The 'mythemes' (minimal significant units of a myth) which the structura-

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