The religion of the epic is multiform.  But it stands, in a certain sense, as one religion, and from two points of view it is worthy of special regard.  One may look upon it either as the summing up of Brahmanism in the new Hinduism, as the final expression of a religion which forgets nothing and absorbs everything; or one may study it as a belief composed of historical strata, endeavoring to divide it into its different layers, as they have been super-imposed one upon another in the course of ages.  From the latter point of view the Vedic divinities claim the attention first.  There are still traces of the original power of Agni and S[=u]rya, as we have shown, and Wind still makes with these two a notable triad,[63] whereas Indra, impotent as he is, hymnless as he is,—­save in the oldest portions of the work,—­still leads the gods, now godkins, of the ancient pantheon, and still, in theory, at least, off a paradise to the knight that dies nobly on the field.[64] But one sees at once that the preservation of the dignity of these deities is due to different causes.  Indra cannot even save a snake that grasps his hand for safety; he wages war against the demons’ ‘triple town,’ and signally fails of his purpose, for the demons are as strong as the gods, and there are D[=a]navendras as well as D[=a]navarshis.[65] But Indra is the figure-head of the whole ancient pantheon, and for this reason he plays so constant, if so weak, a role, in the epic.  The only important thing in connection with him is his heaven.  As an individual deity Indra lives, on the whole, only in the tales of old, for example, in that of his cheating Namuci (ix. 43. 32 ff.).  Nothing new and clever is told of him which would indicate power, only a new trick or two, as when he steals from Karna.  It is quite otherwise with Agni and S[=u]rya.  They are not so vaguely identified with the one god as is ‘Indra and the other Vasus.’  It is merely because these gods are prominently forms of Vishnu that they are honored with hymns in the epic.  This is seen from the nature of the hymns, and also from the fact that it is either as fire or as sun that Vishnu destroys at the end of the aeons.  For it is, perhaps, somewhat daring to say, and yet it seems to be the fact, that the solar origin of Vishnu is not lost sight of.

The pantheistic Vishnu is the [=a]tm[=a], and Vishnu, after all, is but a form of fire.  Therefore is it that the epic Vishnu is perpetually lapsing into fire; while fire and sun are doubly honored as special forms of the highest.  It is, then, not so much on account of a survival of ancient dignity[66] that sun and fire stand so high, but rather because they are the nearest approach to the effulgence of the Supreme.  Thus while in one place one is told that after seven suns have appeared the supreme gods become the fire of destruction and complete the ruin, in another he reads that it is the sun alone which, becoming twelvefold, does all the work of the Supreme.[67]