Vedic Mytholgy

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1. INTRODUCTION. § l. Religion and mythology. - Religion in its widest sense includes on the one hand the conception which men entertain of the divine or supernatural powers and, on the other, that seme of the dependence of human welfare on those powers which finds its expression in various forms of worship. Mythofogy is connected with the former side of religion as furnishing the whole body of myths or stories which are told about gods and heroes and which describe their chaTacter and origin, their actions and surroundings. Such myths have their source in the attempt of the human mind, in a primitive and unscientific age, to explain the various forces and phenomena of nature with which man is confronted. They represent in fact the conjectural science of a primitive mental condition. For statements which to the highly civilised mind would be merely metaphorical, amount in that early stage to explanations of the phenomena observed. The inteltectual difficulties raised by t