[Footnote ref 2] R.V.X. 168. 3, 4.

It was the forces of nature and her manifestations, on earth here, the atmosphere around and above us, or in the Heaven beyond the vault of the sky that excited the devotion and imagination of the Vedic poets.  Thus with the exception of a few abstract gods of whom we shall presently speak and some dual divinities, the gods may be roughly classified as the terrestrial, atmospheric, and celestial.

Polytheism, Henotheism and Monotheism.

The plurality of the Vedic gods may lead a superficial enquirer to think the faith of the Vedic people polytheistic.  But an intelligent reader will find here neither polytheism nor monotheism but a simple primitive stage of belief to which both of these may be said to owe their origin.  The gods here do not preserve their proper places as in a polytheistic faith, but each one of them shrinks into insignificance or shines as supreme according as it is the object of adoration or not.  The Vedic poets were the children of nature.  Every natural phenomenon excited their wonder, admiration or veneration.  The poet is struck with wonder that “the rough red cow gives soft white milk.”  The appearance or the setting of the sun sends a thrill into the minds of the Vedic sage and with wonder-gazing eyes he exclaims: 

   “Undropped beneath, not fastened firm, how comes it
   That downward turned he falls not downward? 
   The guide of his ascending path,—­who saw it?”

[Footnote Ref 1] R.V.  IV. 13. 5.

The sages wonder how “the sparkling waters of all rivers flow into one ocean without ever filling it.”  The minds of the Vedic

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[Footnote 1:  The Rigveda, by Kaegi, p. 35.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid, p. 38.]

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people as we find in the hymns were highly impressionable and fresh.  At this stage the time was not ripe enough for them to accord a consistent and well-defined existence to the multitude of gods nor to universalize them in a monotheistic creed.  They hypostatized unconsciously any force of nature that overawed them or filled them with gratefulness and joy by its beneficent or aesthetic character, and adored it.  The deity which moved the devotion or admiration of their mind was the most supreme for the time.  This peculiar trait of the Vedic hymns Max Muller has called Henotheism or Kathenotheism:  “a belief in single gods, each in turn standing out as the highest.  And since the gods are thought of as specially ruling in their own spheres, the singers, in their special concerns and desires, call most of all on that god to whom they ascribe the most power in the matter,—­to whose department if I may say so, their wish belongs.  This god alone is present to the mind of the suppliant; with him for the time being is associated everything that can be said of a divine being;—­he is