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Indian Myth and Legend: Volume One, The Vedic Gods
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Free material for Mackenzie's Indian Myth and Legend: which of his comparisons still stand, the thirty-two figures with the chapters they appear in, four ways into the book, and how to read the Sanskrit names.
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Which comparisons still stand
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Mackenzie compares Indra to Thor, Agni to Heimdal and half the pantheon to something Babylonian, in the same tone whether the parallel is a proven cognate or a theory nobody now defends. Four kinds, graded by how much weight each will bear.
Open PDF66 KBWho is who
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Thirty-two gods, demons and mortals — Indra, Agni, Varuna, Yama who was the first man, the dragon Vritra — each with the chapters they appear in and how often. Note that there are two Savitris: a solar deity and a princess, and they are not the same figure.
Open PDF88 KBFour ways in
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Where to start depending on why you picked the book up, with Mackenzie's own chapter numbers so it works with any edition of the 1913 text, and how long each of the five chapters runs.
Open PDF64 KBThe names
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Sanskrit has three s-sounds, a set of long vowels Mackenzie usually does not mark, and a final -a that is pronounced. Four things worth knowing before several hundred proper names start arriving.
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About this material
Donald A. Mackenzie died in 1936, so his 1913 text is in the public domain in the United States and, since 1 January 2007, in the UK, the EU and Türkiye (source: Project Gutenberg #47228). The register, the who's-who, the reading paths and the note on the names are Valice Press's own writing. None of the 1913 illustrations is reproduced: two of those in these chapters are paintings by Nandalal Bose, who died in 1966 and whose work is still in copyright, and the rest name no creator at all.