with monotheism descended to polytheism, and then leapt again into the conception of that Father-god whose form, in the end of the Rig Vedic period, out-varunas Varuna as encompasser and lord of all.  If, on the other hand, one see in Varuna a god who, from the ‘covering,’ heaven and cloud and rain, from earliest time has been associated with the sun as a pair, and recognize in Varuna’s loftier form the product of that gradual elevation to which were liable all the gods at the hands of the Hindu priests; if one see in him at this stage the highest god which a theology, based on the worship of natural phenomena, was able to evolve; then, for the reception of those gods who overthrew him from his supremacy, because of their greater freedom from physical restraints, there is opened a logical and historical path—­until that god comes who in turn follows these half-embodied ones, and stands as the first immaterial author of the universe—­and so one may walk straight from the physical beginning of the Rig Vedic religion to its spiritual Brahmanic end.

We turn now to one or two phenomena-deities that were never much tampered with by priestly speculation; their forms being still as bright and clear as when the first Vedic worshipper, waiting to salute the rising sun, beheld in all her beauty, and thus praised

THE DAWN.[94]

  As comes a bride hath she approached us, gleaming;
  All things that live she rouses now to action. 
  A fire is born that shines for human beings;
  Light hath she made, and driven away the darkness.

  Wide-reaching hath she risen, to all approaching,
  And shone forth clothed in garments white and glistening,
  Of gold her color, fair to see her look is,
  Mother of kine,[95] leader of days she gleameth.

  Bearing the gods’ eye, she, the gracious maiden,
  —­Leading along the white and sightly charger[96]
  —­Aurora, now is seen, revealed in glory,
  With shining guerdons unto all appearing.

  O near and dear one, light far off our foes, and
  Make safe to us our kines’ wide pasture-places. 
  Keep from us hatred; what is good, that bring us,
  And send the singer wealth, O generous maiden.

  With thy best beams for us do thou beam widely,
  Aurora, goddess bright, our life extending;
  And food bestow, O thou all goods possessing,
  Wealth, too, bestowing, kine and steeds and war-cars

  Thou whom Vasistha’s[97] sons extol with praises,
  Fair-born Aurora, daughter of Dyaus, the bright one,
  On us bestow thou riches high and mighty,
  —­O all ye gods with weal forever guard us.