ed in or subsumed under
those of the greater or more definite local gods. If, for example, the
Canaanite Baals are gods or lords of underground irrigation,[581] this
is because they, as divine lords of the particular regions, control all
phenomena; they are, in fact, also gods of rain and thunderstorms,
harvests and war. So rain-gods in general are to be regarded as local
deities, among whose functions that of bestowing rain was regarded as
specially important. In the lowest systems the rain-giver may be a
sacred stone, dipped in a stream,[582] or a royal or priestly magician
who is held responsible and is punished if the expected result is not
attained.[583] In such cases the procedure is often one of imitative
magic.[584]

+315+. If there be, in the next higher stratum of belief, a local or
tribal god, it is he who is looked to for the rain supply; so the early
Hebrews looked to Yahweh,[585] and the Canaanites, doubtless, to the
Baals. The economic importance of rain led, even in low tribes, to the
conception of a special deity charged with its bestowal.[586] In more
elaborate mythologies various deities are credited with rain-making
power. In India, for example, Dyaus, the Maruts, Parjanya, Brihaspati,
Indra, Agni,[587] all concerned with rain, have, all except Agni,
evidently grown from local figures with general functions; this appears
from the great variety of parts they play. The same thing is true,
perhaps, of Zeus and Jupiter in their character of rain-gods--as
all-sufficient divine patrons they would be dispensers of all blessings,
including rain; they seem, however, to have been originally gods of the
sky, and thus naturally the special guardians of rain.[588]

+316+. Great masses of water have given rise to myths, mostly
cosmogonic. The conception of a watery mass as the primeval material of
the world (in Egypt, Babylonia, India, Greece, Rome) belongs not to
religion but to science; in a relatively advanced period, however, this
mass was represented as a monster, the antagonist of the gods of light
and order, and from this representation has come a whole literature of
myths. In Babylonia a great cosmogonic poem grew up in which the dragon
figures of the water chaos (Tiamat, Mummu, Kingu) play a great
part,[589] and echoes of this myth appear in the later Old Testament
books.

+317+. In the more elaborate pantheons the local deities of streams and
springs tend to disappear, and gods of ocean appear: in Bab