the gods” is a prayer of the Atharva Veda (xi. 2. 28).  Agni and Rudra, in the Rig-Veda, are both called ‘cattle-guarding,’ but not for the same reason.  Agni represents a fire-stockade, while Rudra in kindness does not strike with his lightning-bolt.  The two ideas, with the identification of Rudra and Agni, may have merged together.  Then too, Rudra has healing medicines (his magical side), and Agni is kindest to men.  All Agni’s names are handed over in the Br[=a]hmanas to Rudra-Civa, just as Rudra previously had taken the epithets of P[=u]shan (above), true to his robber-name.  To ignore the height to which at this period is raised the form of Rudra-Civa is surely unhistorical; so much so that we deem it doubtful whether Civa-invocations elsewhere, as in the S[=u]tra referred to above, should be looked upon as interpolations.  In the M[=a]itr[=a]yan[=i] Collection, the Rudrajapas, the invocations to Rudra as the greatest god, the highest spirit, the lord of beings (Bhava), are expressly to Civa Girica, the mountain-lord (2. 9; Schroeder, p. 346).  In the [=A]itareya Br[=a]hmana it evidently is Rudra-Civa, the god of ghastly forms (made by the gods, it is said, as a composite of all the ’most horrible parts’ of all the gods), who is deputed to slay the Father-god (when the latter, as a beast, commits incest with his daughter), and chooses as his reward for the act the office of ’lord of cattle.’[78] This is shown clearly by the fact that the fearsome Rudra is changed to the innocuous Rudriya in the next paragraph.  As an example of how in the Br[=a]hmanas Rudra-Civa has taken to himself already the powers of Agni, the great god of the purely sacrificial period, may be cited Cat.  Br. vi. 1. 3. 10 and 2. 1. 12.  Here Agni is Kum[=a]ra, Rudra, Carva (Sarva)[79], Pacupati (lord of beasts), Bh[=a]irava (terrible), Acani (lightning), Bhava (lord of beings), Mah[=a]deva (great god), the Lord—­his ‘thrice three names.’  But where the Br[=a]hmana assumes that these are names of Agni it is plain that one has Rudra-Civa in process of absorbing Agni’s honors.

The third element in the Pur[=a]nic trinity,[80] identified with the Father-god, genealogically deserves his lower position.  His rivals are of older lineage.  The reason for his inferior position is, practically, that he has little to do with man.  Being already created, man takes more interest in the gods that preserve and destroy.[81] Even Brahm[=a]’s old exploits are, as we have shown, stolen from him and given over to Vishnu.  The famous (totemistic) tortoise legend was originally Brahm[=a]’s, and so with others of the ten ‘forms’ of Vishnu, for instance the boar-shape, in which Vishnu manifests himself, and the fish-shape of Brahm[=a] (epic) in the flood-story.  The formal trim[=u]rti or tr[=a]ipurusha (’three persons’) is a late figure.  It would seem that a Harihara (Vishnu and Civa as one) preceded the trinity, though the dual name is not found till quite late.[82] But, as we showed above, the epic practically identifies Vishnu and Civa as equals, before it unites with these Brahm[=a] as an equal third.