Even so the sterner
phenomena of nature--whirlwind and tempest, lightning and thunder, flood
and storm-wave, plague, pestilence, and famine; all of these oftentimes
assume in the East a character of awful majesty before which man cowers
in helplessness and despair. The conceptions and feelings hence arising
have from the beginning powerfully affected the religion of the Hindus.
Every-where we can trace the impress of the grander manifestations of
nature--the impress of their beneficence, their beauty, their might,
their mystery, or their terribleness.
[Sidenote: The deities are "the bright ones," according to the language
of the sacred books of India.]
The Sanskrit word for god is _deva_, which means _bright, shining_. Of
physical phenomena it was especially those connected with light that
enkindled feelings of reverence. The black thunder-cloud that enshrouded
nature, in which the demon had bound the life-giving waters, passed
away; for the glittering thunder-bolt was launched, and the streams
rushed down, exulting in their freedom; and then the heaven shone out
again, pure and peaceful as before. But such a wonder as the dawn--with
far-streaming radiance, returning from the land of mystery, fresh in
eternal youth, and scattering the terrors of the night before her--who
could sufficiently admire? And let it be remembered that in the Hindu
mind the interval between admiration and adoration is exceedingly small.
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