ication of various phenomena, the sun, thunder, fire,
rivers, and so forth, but these deities unlike the Semitic gods had
little to do with special tribes or localities and the philosophic
Indian easily traced a connection between them. It is not difficult to
see that sun, fire and lightning have something in common. The gods are
frequently thought of as joined in couples, triads or larger companies
and early worship probably showed the beginnings of a feature which is
prominent in the later ritual, namely, that a sacrifice is not an
isolated oblation offered to one particular god but a series of
oblations presented to a series of deities. There was thus little
disposition to exalt one god and annihilate the others, but every
disposition to identify the gods with one another and all of them with
something else. Just as rivers, mountains and plains are dimly seen to
be parts of a whole which later ages call nature, so are the gods seen
to be parts of some divine whole which is greater than any of them. Even
in the Rig Veda we find such sentiments as "The priests speak of the One
Being in many ways: they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan[156]." Hence it
is not surprising that when in the later Vedic period a tendency towards
monotheism (but monotheism of a pantheistic type) appears, the supreme
position is given to none of the old deities but to a new figure,
Prajapati. This word, meaning Lord of living creatures, occurs in the
Rig Veda as an epithet of the sun and is also occasionally used as the
name of the Being by whom all gods and worlds were generated and by
whose power they continue to exist. In the Brahmanas and later ritual
literature he is definitely recognized as the supreme deity, the
Creator, the first sacrificer and the sacrifice itself. It is perhaps
owing to his close connection with ceremonial that enquiring and
speculative minds felt Prajapati not to be a final or satisfactory
explanation of the universe. He is identified with Brahma, the active
personal creator, and this later name gradually ousts the other but he
does not, any more than Indra or Varuna, become the Atman or supreme
universal Being of the Upanishads.

The principal Vedic deities are male and the few goddesses that are
mentioned such as Ushas. the Dawn, seem to owe their sex to purely
dramatic reasons. Greece and Rome as well as India felt it appropriate
to represent the daybreak as a radiant nymph. But though in later times
such goddesses a