s was deified, and took his place in the
ranks of the recognized gods as their superior. Thus there arose in
Buddhism, by a departure from the doctrine of the master, a new
polytheism. This was afterwards, through the influence of the
Brahminical priestly caste, suppressed in India, but spread over other
parts of Asia, to the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and also to
China.

_e. Later modification of Brahminism in connection with the worship of
Siva and Vishnu._

While Brahminism saw itself menaced by the steadily increasing influence
of Buddhism, the former nature-religion, dispossessed by the Brahmins,
asserted its rights in the worship of Siva in the valleys of the
Himalaya Mountains, and in that of Vishnu on the banks of the Ganges.
Siva is the Rudra of the Veda, the boisterous god of storms, the giver
of rain and growth. Vishnu is the same divinity among other races,
conceived under the influence of a softer climate in a modified form as
the blue sky. Both divinities, originally belonging to different parts
of India, were afterwards taken, first Vishnu, and then also Siva, into
the theological system of the Brahmins, and formed with Brahma, but not
until the fourth century after Christ, the trimurti, according to which
the one supreme being Parabrama is worshiped in the threefold form of
Brahma the creating, Vishnu the sustaining, and Siva the destroying
power of nature. To this later period of Brahminism belongs also the
alteration of the old epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, by which the
heroes Rama and Krishna are represented as avatars, that is incarnations
or human impersonations, of Vishnu. In this also there is evidently an
effort to bring the deity, conceived as the abstract One, into closer
union with man, an effort which is likewise visible in the later Yoga
system of the Brahmins, in which, by the admission of Buddhistic
elements, the visible world is recognized as real, the old rigid
asceticism mitigated, Vishnu represented as the soul of the world, and
immortality taught as a return of the individual soul to Brahma.

2. THE WEST ARIANS, IRANIANS.

[THE BACTRIANS, MEDES, PERSIANS.]

The ancient religion of the Bactrians in the period before Zoroaster was
patriarchal, and consisted in the worship of fire, as the beneficent
power of nature, and of Mithras, the god of the sun, combined with that
of the good spirits (Ahuras), among which were Geus-Urva (the spirit of
the earth), Cpento-mai