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place history, the fact of the later development in India of heroic 
worship, the absence of anthropomorphism from the highest 
thoughts of the Vedic era, and the early grasp of the most 
exalted ideas of creation, supreme sovereignty of the Deity, 
infinitude, omniscience, omnipotence, justice, righteousness, 
and so forth. There is a very instructive passage in Pro- 
fessor Max Miiller’s India, what can it teach us? (pp. 199 
—201): speaking of the “large number of the so-called 
Devas, bright and sunny beings, or gods,’’ he notices how 
‘every act of nature, whether on the earth, or in the air, or 
in the highest heaven, is ascribed to their agency.” ‘‘ When 
we say it thunders, they said Indra thunders; when we say 
it rains, they said Parganya pours out his buckets; when we 
say it dawns, they said the beantiful Ushas appears like a 
dancer, displaying her splendour; when we say 7¢ grows dark, 
they said Sirya unharnesses his steeds. The whole of nature 
was alive to the poets of the Veda, the presence of the gods 
was felt everywhere, and in that sentiment of the presence of 
the gods there was a germ of religious morality, sufficiently 
strong, it would seem, to restrain people from committing, as 
it were before the eyes of their gods, what they were ashamed 
to commit before the eyes of men. When speaking of 
Varuna, the old god of the sky, one poet says,* ‘ Varuna, 
the great lord of these worlds, sees as if he were here,’”’ &. 
This is a point worth careful study. ‘We know that there 
never was such a Deva, or god, or such a thing as Varuna, 
We know it is a mere name, meaning originally ‘ covering or 
all-embracing,’ which was applied to the visible starry sky, 
and afterwards, by a process perfectly intelligible, developed 
into the name of a Being endowed with human and super- 
human qualities.” ‘ Only,” Professor Max Miiller goes on to 
say, “let us be careful in the use of that phrase, ‘It is a 
mere name.’ No name is a mere name. Every name was 
originally meant for something; only it often failed to express 
what it was meant to express, and thus became a weak or an 
empty name, or what we call ‘a mere name.’ So it was with 
these names of the Vedic gods. They were all meant to 
express the Beyond, the Invisible behind the Visible, the 
Infinite within the Finite, the Supernatural above the 
Natural, the Divine, omnipresent, and omnipotent. They 
failed in expressing what, by its very nature, must always 
remain inexpressible. But that Inexpressible itself remained, 
and, in spite of all these failures, it never succumbed, or 
* Atharva-Veda, iv. 16. 
