ORIENTAL SERIES.

INTRODUCTION. xi
delight and kindled the poetic fire. So each of the deities in
turn received his meed of praise, and each in his turn was the
powerful god, ahle to accomplish the desires of his excite a feeling of awe or admiration.
votary or to
Thus there were many distinct deities, and each of them had
some general distinctive powers and attributes ; but their attri-
butes and characters were frequently confounded, and there was
a constant tendency to elevate now this one now that one to the
supremacy, and to look upon him as the Great Power. In
course of time a pre-eminence was given to a triad of deities,
foreshadowing the Tri-murti or Trinity of later days. In this
triad Agni (Fire) and Surya (the Sun) held a place,
and the
third place was assigned either to Vayu (the Wind) or to India
(god of the sky). Towards the end of the -Rs'g-veda Sanhita, in
the hymns of the latest date, the idea of one Supreme Being
assumed a more definite shape, and the Hindu mind was per-
ceiving, even if it had not distinctly realised, the great con-
ception.
As the Yedic hymns grew ancient, ritual developed and
theological inquiry awoke. Then arose what is called the Brahmawa
portion
of the Veda. This consists of a variety of com-
positions, chiefly in prose, and attached to the different Mantras.
Ritual and liturgy were the chief objects of these writings, but
traditions were cited to enforce and illustrate, and speculation
was set at work to explain, the allusions of the hymns. The
simplicity of the Yedic myths gradually became obscured, the
deities grew more personal, and speculations as to the origin
of the world and of the human race invested them with new
attributes. Later on, in the Arawyakas and Upanishads, which
form part of the collective Brahmawa, a further development
took place, but principally in a philosophical direction.
Between the times of the Sanhita and of the Brahmana the
conception of a Supreme Being had become established- The
Brahmawas recognise one Great Being as the Soul of the Uni-
verse, and abound with philosophical speculations as to the work
of creation and the origin of man. A golden egg was produced
in the universal waters, from which in course of time came
forth Prajapati, the progenitor or, the quiescent Universal Soul,