These were, in Joel's words, the "wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke," when the "sun is turned into darkness, and the moon into blood."
The clouds, the fire, the terrifying din, the darkness in the middle of the day; the fantastic figures on the sky of speeding chariots, run-'* Ibid., Hymns 168, 64. 20 ibid., Hymns 168, 167, 106, 38, 86.
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ning horses, marching warriors; the trembling of the earth, the reeling of the firmament, were visualized, felt, and feared on the shores of both the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, for they were not local disturbances, but displays of cosmic forces in cosmic dimensions. Joel did not copy from the Vedas nor the Vedas from Joel. In more than this one instance it is possible to show that peoples, separated even by broad oceans, have described some spectacle in similar terms. These were pageants, projected against the celestial screen, that, a few hours after they were seen in India, appeared over Nineveh, Jerusalem, and Athens, shortly thereafter over Rome and Scandinavia, and a few hours later over the lands of the Mayas and Incas.
The spectators saw in the celestial prodigies either demons, as the Erinyes of the Greeks or the Furies of the Latins, or gods whom they invoked in prayers, as in the Vedas of the Hindus, or the executors of the Lord's wrath, as in Joel and Isaiah.
In the Section "Isaiah" we maintained that the army of the Lord was not the Assyrian host, but a celestial host. Isaiah called the army of the Most High "the terrible ones."
And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far,
and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth:
and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly:
None shall be weary nor stumble among them;
none shall slumber nor sleep;
neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed,
nor the latchet of their shoes be broken:
Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent,
their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint,
and their wheels like a whirlwind.
Their roaring shall be like a lion . . .
they shall roar like young lions . . .
like the roaring of the sea:
and if one look unto the land,
behold darkness and sorrow;
and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.21
21 Isaiah 5 : 26 ff.
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The mighty roaring, the wheels revolving like a whirlwind, the horses with hoofs of flint, the light darkened in heaven are once more common features.
Vedic Hymns These strong, manly, strong armed Maruts do not strive among themselves; firm are the horns, the weapons on your chariot, and on your faces are splendours.22
They who by their own might
seem to have risen above heaven and earth . . .
they are glorious like brilliant heroes,
they shine forth like foe-destroying youths.23
They who are roaring and hasting like winds,
brilliant like the tongues of fire,
powerful like mailed soldiers . . .
who hold together like the spokes of chariot-wheels,
who glance forward like victorious heroes,
who are swift, like the best of horses.24
The dreadful figures scattered a hail of meteorites that bombarded walls with hot gravel and flew into windows; simultaneously cities were turned into heaps by the leaping ground.
"The multitude of the terrible ones" is "like small dust," their invasion "shall be at an instant suddenly," says Isaiah.25 The Lord shall send his host "with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire."
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These Maruts are men brilliant with lightning, they shoot with thunderbolts, they blaze with the wind, they shake the mountains.28
Isaiah (25 : 4) says that "the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall."
Thou [the Lord] shalt bring down the noise of strangers . . . the branch of the terrible ones shall be brought low.27
22 Mandala VIII, Hymn 20. 23 Mandala X, Hymn 77.
24 Ibid., Hymn 78. 25 isaiah 29 : 5.
26 Vedic Hymns, Mandala V, Hymn 54. 27 Isaiah 25 : 5.
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WORLDS IN COLLISION
The Maruts are often called "the terrible ones," the same term Isaiah used. "The terrible ones" of the Vedas were not common storm clouds, nor were the "terrible ones" of Joel and Isaiah human beings. Certainly only by chance did the similarity of names and pictures in the Vedas and the Prophets escape the attention of students of religion.
The Maruts are understood here as comets which in great numbers started to whirl in the sky on short orbits, after the impact of Mars and Venus. They followed and preceded the planet Mars.
The name Mars (genitive, Martis) would be of the same origin as Marut. It is therefore gratifying to read that the philological relation has already been established.28 It is even more satisfactory that this philological equation was made without knowledge of the actual relation between the planet Mars and "the terrible ones."
By comparing Hebrew historical, Chinese astronomical, and Latin ecclesiastical material, we have established that it was the planet Mars which caused a series of catastrophes in the eighth and seventh centuries before this era. The Greek epos explained how it happened that Venus ceased and Mars began to be a threat to the earth. In heavenly battles, Ares or Nergal, both known as the planet Mars, had an entourage of demoniac figures. The name Mars is derived from the Indian Marut; Maruts, "the terrible ones," are "the terrible ones" of Isaiah and Joel.
The origin of the Greek name Ares was debated by philologists,29 and reasons against a common root with the identical Mars were admitted. It seems to me that just as Mars is derived from Marut, "the terrible ones" of the Vedas, so Ares was formed from the "terrible one" of the Hebrew, which, as used by Joel and Isaiah, is ariz.
In a no longer extant passage of Pliny there was something said about comets being produced by planets.30 Also the Soochow Chart
28 "Why should we object to Mars, Martis as a parallel form of Maruts? I do not say the two words are identical, I only maintain that the root is the same. . . . If there could be any doubt as to the original identity of Marut and Mars, it is dispelled by the Umbrian name cerfo Martio, which, as Grassmann (Kuhn's Zeitschrift, XVI, 190, etc.) has shown, corresponds exactly to the expression sardha-s maruta-s, the host of the Maruts. Such minute coincidences can hardly be accidental." F. Max Miiller, Vedic Hymns (1891), I, xxv. » Ibid., p. xxvi. so Cf. Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, Vol. XI, Col. 1156.
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refers to occasions in the past when comets were born from planets, from Mars, Venus, and others.
Samples from the Planets
In the Vedic hymns the Maruts are implored to "be far from us and far the stone which you hurl."
When comets pass close to the earth, stones occasionally fall; the classic case is that of the meteorite that fell at Aegospotami when a comet shone in the sky.1 The Hindu book of Varahasanhita sees in the meteorites portents of devastation by fire and earthquake.2
Since the planets were gods, stones hurled by them or by the comets created in their encounters, were feared as divine missiles,3 and when they fell and were found, they were worshiped.
The stone of Cronus at Delphi,4 the image of Diana at Ephesus, which, according to Acts (19 : 35), was the image which fell down from Jupiter, the stones of Amon and Seth at Thebes,5 were meteorites. Also the image of Venus on Cyprus was a stone which fell from the sky.6 The robin-bobin
Palladium of Troy was a stone that fell on the earth "from Pallas Athene" 7 (the planet Venus).
The sacred stone of Tyre, too, was a meteorite related to Astarte, the planet Venus. "Traveling about the world, she [Astarte] found a star falling from air, or sky, which she taking up, consecrated on the holy island [Tyre]."8 At Aphaca in Syria a meteorite fell which "was thought to be Astarte herself," and a temple to Astarte was built there; festivals "were regu-1 Aristotle Meteorologica i. 7. $