Of Civa, on the other hand, the prototype is Rudra (’red’), his constant sobriquet.  In the Rig Veda he is the god of red lightning, who is the father of the Maruts, the storm-gods.  His attributes of a fulgurant god are never lost.  Even as Civa the All-god he is still the god of the blue neck, whose three-forked trident and home among the mountains remind us of his physical origin.  He is always the fairest of the gods, and both early and late he is terrible, to be averted by prayer, even where his magic ‘medicines’ are asked for.  To him are addressed the most suppliant cries:  “O Rudra, spare us, strike not the men, slay not the kine.”  In the Atharva Veda at every step one finds characteristics which on the one hand are but exaggerations of the type formulated in the Rig Veda, and on the other precursors of the signs of the later god.  In Civaism, in contradistinction to Vishnuism, there is not a trace of the euhemerism which has been suspected in the Krishna-Vishnu cult.  The Rudra of the Rig Veda already begins to be identified with the triune fire, for he bears the standing epithet of fire, “he of three mothers."[73] And this name he keeps, whether as Rudra, who is “brilliant as the sun” (RV. i. 43. 5), whose weapon is “the shining one that is emitted from the sky and passes along the earth” (ib. vii. 46. 3); or again, as the “red boar of the sky,” the “holder of the bolt” (ib. ii. 33. 3), and, above all gods, “the terrible” (x. 126. 5).

Coming to the Brahmanic period one finds him a dweller in the mountain tops, of a red color, with a blue neck, the especial lord of the mountains, and so of robbers; while he is also the ‘incantation-god,’ the ‘god of low people.’  Some of these are Rudra’s attributes; but here his name is already Civa, so that one may trace the changes down the centuries till he finds again in the epic that Civa is the lord of mountains, the patron of thieves (Hara, robber?), and endowed with the trident, the blue neck,[74] and the three mothers of old.  In the middle period he has so many titles that one probably has to accept in the subsequent Civa not only the lineal descendant of the Vedic Rudra, but also a combination of other local cults, where clan gods, originally diverse, were worshipped as one in consequence of their mutual likeness.  One of the god’s especial names is here Bhava, while in the earlier period Bhava and Rudra are distinct, but they are invoked as a pair (AV).[75] What gives Civa his later tremendous popularity, however, is the feature to which we have alluded in the chapter on the epic.  In the epic, all the strength of Civa lies in the Linga.[76] Both Bhava and Rudra, as Carva, the archer—­his local eastern name—­are represented as hurling the lightning, and it is simply from identity of attributes that they have become identified in person (AV. x. i. 23).  Rudra’s title of Pacupati, or ’lord of cattle’[77] goes back to the Vedic age:  “Be kind to the kine of him who believes in