d to care to determine the relative worth and position of the
objects of his adoration; but the temporary influence of the phenomenon
to which he addresses his praises bears too strongly upon his mind to
allow him for the time to consider the claims of rival powers to which
at other times he is wont to look up with equal feelings of awe and
reverence. It is this immediateness of impulse under which the human
mind in its infancy strives to give utterance to its emotions that
imparts to many of its outpourings the ring of monotheistic fervour.

The generic name given to these impersonations, viz. _deva_ ("the
shining ones"), points to the conclusion, sufficiently justified by the
nature of the more prominent objects of Vedic adoration as well as by
common natural occurrences, that it was the striking phenomena of light
which first and most powerfully swayed the Aryan mind. In the primitive
worship of the manifold phenomena of nature it is not, of course, so
much their physical aspect that impresses the human heart as the moral
and intellectual forces which are supposed to move and animate them. The
attributes and relations of some of the Vedic deities, in accordance
with the nature of the objects they represent, partake in a high degree
of this spiritual element; but it is not improbable that in an earlier
phase of Aryan worship the religious conceptions were pervaded by it to
a still greater and more general extent, and that the Vedic belief,
though retaining many of the primitive features, has on the whole
assumed a more sensuous and anthropomorphic character. This latter
element is especially predominant in the attributes and imagery applied
by the Vedic poets to _Indra_, the god of the atmospheric region, the
favourite figure in their pantheon.

While the representatives of the prominent departments of nature appear
to the Vedic bard as co-existing in a state of independence of one
another, their relation to the mortal worshipper being the chief subject
of his anxiety, a simple method of classification was already resorted
to at an early time, consisting in a triple division of the deities into
gods residing in the sky, in the air, and on earth. It is not, however,
until a later stage,--the first clear indication being conveyed in a
passage of the tenth book of the _Rigveda_--that this attempt at a
polytheistic system is followed up by the promotion of one particular
god to the dignity of chief guardian for each of th