that when in the later Vedic period a tendency towards monotheism (but monotheism of a pantheistic type) appears, the supreme position is given to none of the old deities but to a new figure, Prajapati.  This word, meaning Lord of living creatures, occurs in the Rig Veda as an epithet of the sun and is also occasionally used as the name of the Being by whom all gods and worlds were generated and by whose power they continue to exist.  In the Brahmanas and later ritual literature he is definitely recognized as the supreme deity, the Creator, the first sacrificer and the sacrifice itself.  It is perhaps owing to his close connection with ceremonial that enquiring and speculative minds felt Prajapati not to be a final or satisfactory explanation of the universe.  He is identified with Brahma, the active personal creator, and this later name gradually ousts the other but he does not, any more than Indra or Varuna, become the Atman or supreme universal Being of the Upanishads.

The principal Vedic deities are male and the few goddesses that are mentioned such as Ushas. the Dawn, seem to owe their sex to purely dramatic reasons.  Greece and Rome as well as India felt it appropriate to represent the daybreak as a radiant nymph.  But though in later times such goddesses as Durga assumed in some sects a paramount position, and though the Veda is familiar with the idea of the world being born, there are few traces in it of a goddess corresponding to the Great Mother, Cybele or Astarte.

In an earlier period of Vedic studies many deities were identified with figures in the classical or Teutonic mythology chiefly on philological grounds but most of these identifications have now been abandoned.  But a few names and figures seem to be found among both the Asiatic and European Aryans and to point to a common stock of ideas.  Dyaus, the Sky God, is admittedly the same as Zeus and Jupiter.  The Asvins agree in character, though not in name, with the Dioscuri and other parallels are quoted from Lettish mythology.  Bhaga, the bountiful giver, a somewhat obscure deity, is the same word as the Slavonic Bog, used in the general sense of God, and we find deva in Sanskrit, deus in Latin, and devas in Lithuanian.  Ushas, the Dawn, is phonetically related to [Greek:  ’Ehos] and Aurora who, however, are only half deities.  Indra, if he cannot be scientifically identified with Thor, is a similar personage who must have grown out of the same stock of ideas.  By a curious transference the Prophet Elias has in south-eastern Europe inherited the attributes of the thunder god and is even now in the imagination of the peasantry a jovial and riotous being who, like Indra, drives a noisy chariot across the sky.