is caste was effaced.

The verses, the work of shepherds who were singers, are invocations to
the dawn, to the first flushes of the morning, to the skies'
heightening hues, and the vermillion moment when the devouring Asiatic
sun appears. There are other themes, minor melodies, but the chief
inspiration is light.

To primitive shepherds the approach of darkness was the coming of
death. The dawn, which they were never wholly sure would reappear, was
resurrection. They welcomed it with cries which the _Veda_ preserves,
which the _Avesta_ retains and the _Eddas_ repeat. The potent forces
that produced night, the powers potenter still that routed it, they
regarded as beings whose moods genuflexions could affect. In perhaps
the same spirit that Frenchmen assisted at a _lever du roi_, and
Englishmen attend a prince's levee, the Aryan breakfasted on song and
sacrifice. It was an homage to the rising sun.

The sun was _deva_. The Sanskrit root _div_, from which the word is
derived, produced deus, devi, divinities--numberless, accursed,
adored, or forgot. The common term applied to all abstractions that
are and have been worshipped, means _That which shines_ and the name
which, in the early Orient, signified a star, designates the Deity in
the Occident to-day.

Apologetically, Tertullian, a Christian Father, remarked: "Some think
our God is the Sun." There were excuses perhaps for those that did.
Adonai, a Hebrew term for the Almighty, is a plural. It means lords.
But the lords indicated were Baalim who were Lords of the Sun.
Moreover, when the early Christians prayed, they turned to the East.
Their holy day was, as the holy day of Christendom still is, Sunday,
day of the Sun, an expression that comes from the Norse, on whom also
shone the light of the Aryan deva.

To shepherds who, in seeking pasture for their flocks, were seeking
also pasture for their souls, the deva became Indra. They had other
gods. There was Agni, fire; Varuna, the sky; Maruts, the tempest.
There was Mithra, day, and Yama, death. There were still others,
infantile, undulant, fluid, not infrequently ridiculous also. But it
was Indra for whom the dew and honey of the morning hymns were spread.
It was Indra who, emerging from darkness, made the earth after his
image, decorated the sky with constellations and wrapped the universe
in space. It was he who poured indifferently on just and unjust the
triple torrent of splendour, light, and life.

Indra was