n the same chapter one is informed that the rays of the
sun are the good (dead), and that every brightest light is the
Father-god. The general conception here is that the sun or the stars
are the destination of the pious. On the other hand it is said that
one will enjoy the fruit of his acts here on earth, in a new birth; or
that he will 'go to the next world'; or that he will suffer for his
sins in hell. The last is told in legendary form, and appears to us to
be not an early view retained in folk-lore, but a late modification of
an old legend. Varuna sends his son Bhrigu to hell to find out what
happens after death, and he finds people suffering torture, and,
again, avenging themselves on those that have wronged them. But,
despite the resemblance between this and Grecian myth, the fact that
in the whole compass of the Rik (in the Atharvan perhaps in v. 19)
there is not the slightest allusion to torture in hell, precludes, to
our mind, the possibility of this phase having been an ancient
inherited belief.[59]

Annihilation or a life in under darkness is the first (Rik) hell. The
general antithesis of light (as good) and darkness (as bad) is here
plainly revealed again. Sometimes a little variation occurs. Thus,
according to _Cat. Br._ vi. 5. 4. 8, the stars are women-souls,
perhaps, as elsewhere, men also. The converse notion that darkness is
the abode of evil appears at a very early date: "Indra brought down
the heathen, _dasyus_, into the lowest darkness," it is said in the
Atharva Veda (ix. 2. 17).[60]

In the later part of the great 'Br[=a]hmana of the hundred paths'
there seems to be a more modern view inculcated in regard to the fate
of the dead. Thus, in vi. 1. 2. 36, the opinion of 'some,' that the
fire on the altar is to bear the worshipper to the sky, is objected
to, and it is explained that he becomes immortal; which antithesis is
in purely Upanishadic style, as will be seen below.

BRAHMANIC THEORIES OF CREATION.

In Vedic polytheism, with its strain of pantheism, the act of creating
the world[61] is variously attributed to different gods. At the end of
this period theosophy invented the god of the golden germ, the great
Person (known also by other titles), who is the one (pantheistic) god,
in whom all things are contained, and who himself is contain in even
the smallest thing. The Atharvan transfers the same idea in its
delineation of the pantheistic image to Varuna, that Varuna who is the
seas and