ranked an ‘asura’ while Indra, unquestionably less refined, is a ‘deva’. Surya, the sun, is called ‘the asura-chaplain of the Devas’. In the later Artharva Veda the word ‘asura’ is applied only to demons, and henceforth that is the generally received meaning. In Iran on the contrary the same term is used to mean the divinity, Ahura. Henceforth the Devas and the Asuras are often seen at war with one another. According to the Satapatha Brahmana, Prajapati is their common ancestor. But the Devas rejected falsehood and chose the truth, while the Asuras rejected truth and chose falsehood. As they spoke only truth, the gods appeared to be weak; but in the end they became strong and attained prosperity. The Asuras at first by their lies won riches, but in the end found destruction. Another legend says that the Asuras when making sacrifice put the offerings in their own mouths, whereas the gods offer them to one another. In spite of their rivalry with the Asuras, the Devas were glad to accept the help of their enemies for the churning of the sea, and at this task the demons showed quite as much skill and energy as the gods. (See page 379.) Generally speaking, it is clear that the popular deities, only slightly Aryan and usually not Aryan at all, were described by the Aryans as demoniacal. Some of them have remained demons until our own times. Others were incorporated sooner or later into the Brahmanic pantheon, almost always retaining certain peculiarities which show their origin. For instance, the terrible forms of the cult of Siva in his aspect as destroyer, the fact that the demons are among his sectaries, and that he is sometimes called ‘lord of demons’ (Bhutapati) seem to point to a non-Aryan origin of his deity. The legend of his marriage with the daughter of Daksha is further confirmation of this hypothesis. Daksha, one of the Prajapatis or lords of creation, out of vanity became violently hostile to Siva. Daksha’s daughter, Sati, a real incarnation of feminine devotion and piety, had secretly given her heart to the cult of the condemned god. When the time came for her betrothal her father ordered a Svayamara (the ceremony where a king’s daughter chose her husband from the assembled suitors) and purposely omitted to invite Siva. When Sati came forward, holding in her hand the garland of flowers which she was to cast round the neck of her chosen husband, she uttered a supreme invocation to the god she loved. ‘If it is true that I am called Sati,’ she exclaimed, throwing her flowers in the air. ‘O Siva, take my garland!’ And immediately Siva appeared, with her garland on his shoulders. Yet later on this union was considered a misalliance. When Daksha went to war with his son- in-law, he called him ‘the god with the monkey’s eyes who married my daughter with her gazelle’s eyes’. ‘It was against my will’, he says further, ‘that I gave my daughter to this sullied personage, the abolisher of rites and destroyer of boundaries…He frequents horrible cemeteries, accompanied by crowds of spirits and ghosts, looking like a madman, naked, with dishevelled hair, wearing a garland of skulls and human bones…a lunatic beloved by lunatics, lord of the demons whose nature is wholly obscure. Alas! at the urging of Brahma I gave my virtuous daughter to this lord of furies, this evil heart.’ Often the demons have only a passing life. Sometimes created by the gods for some particular circumstance — for instance, to conquer the Asuras themselves – these evil beings afterwards disappear for ever as mysteriously as they were born. Again, the gods and goddesses sometimes assume terrible shapes to fight with the demons. For instance, we shall see in the legend of Hiranyakasipu how Vishnu devours his victim in the form of a cruel monster with a lion’s head. But the most typical example of these metamporphoses is certainly that of Siva’s wife. Under the name of Parvati she is presented as a very beautiful young woman, seated beside her divine husband, discoursing with him sometimes of love and sometimes of lofty metaphysics.
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