re-gods that are in part already more
than this, of spirits, and of the Manes; the acknowledgment of a moral
law and a belief in a life hereafter. There is also a vaguer nascent
belief in a creator apart from any natural phenomenon, but the creed
for the most part is poetically, indefinitely, stated: 'Most
wonder-working of the wonder-working gods, who made heaven and
earth'(as above). The corresponding Power is Cerus in Cerus-Creator
(Kronos?), although when a name is given, the Maker, Dh[=a]tar, is
employed; while Tvashtar, the artificer, is more an epithet of the sun
than of the unknown creator. The personification of Dh[=a]tar as
creator of the sun, etc., belongs to later Vedic times, and foreruns
the Father-god of the last Vedic period. Not till the classical age
(below) is found a formal identification of the Vedic nature-gods with
the departed Fathers (Manes). Indra, for example, is invoked in the
Rig Veda to 'be a friend, be a father, be more fatherly than the
fathers';[29] but this implies no patristic side in Indra, who is
called in the same hymn (vs. 4) the son of Dyaus (his father); and
Dyaus Pitar no more implies, as say some sciolists, that Dyaus was
regarded as a human ancestor than does 'Mother Earth' imply a belief
that Earth is the ghost of a dead woman.

In the Veda there is a nature-religion and an ancestor-religion. These
approach, but do not unite; they are felt as sundered beliefs.
Sun-myths, though by some denied _in toto_, appear plainly in the
Vedic hymns. Dead heroes may be gods, but gods, too, are natural
phenomena, and, again, they are abstractions. He that denies any one
of these sources of godhead is ignorant of India.

Mueller, in his _Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, has divided Vedic
literature into four periods, that of _chandas_, songs; _mantras_,
texts; _br[=a]hmanas;_ and _s[=u]tras_. The _mantras_ are in
distinction from _chandas_, the later hymns to the earlier gods.[30]
The latter distinction can, however, be established only on subjective
grounds, and, though generally unimpeachable, is sometimes liable to
reversion. Thus, Mueller looks upon RV. VIII. 30 as 'simple and
primitive,' while others see in this hymn a late _mantra_. Between the
Rig Veda and the Br[=a]hmanas, which are in prose, lies a period
filled out in part by the present form of the Atharva Veda, which, as
has been shown, is a Veda of the low cult that is almost ignored by
the Rig Veda, while it contains at the sam