XL.—On the Principal Deities of the Rigveda
In the paper which I had the honour to read before the Society last winter, I stated the reasons, drawn from history and from comparative philology, which exist for concluding that the Brahmanical Indians belong to the same race as the Greek, the Latin, the Teutonic, and other nations of Europe. If this conclusion be well-founded, it is evident that at the time when the several branches of the great Indo-European family separated to commence their migrations in the direction of their future homes, they must have possessed in common a large stock of religious and mythological conceptions. This common mythology would, in the natural course of events, and from the action of various causes, undergo a gradual modification analogous to that undergone by the common language which had originally been spoken by all these tribes during the period of their union; and, in the one case as in the other, this modification would assume in the different races a varying character, corresponding to the diversity of the influences to which they were severally subjected.