theirs in the case of the older gods.

But it is unnecessary to spend time on this point. It is impossible
for any sober scholar to read the Rig Veda and believe that the Vedic
poets are not worshipping natural phenomena; or that the phenomena so
worshipped were not the original forms of these gods. Whether at a
more remote time there was ever a period when the pre-historic Hindu,
or his pre-Indic ancestor, worshipped the Manes exclusively is another
question, and one with which at present we have nothing to do. The
history of Hindu religions begins with the Rig Veda, and in this
period the worship of Manes and that of natural phenomena were
distinct, nor are there any indications that the latter was ever
developed from the former. It is not denied that the Hindus made gods
of departed men. They did this long after the Vedic period. But there
is no proof that all the Vedic gods, as claims Spencer, were the
worshipped souls of the dead. No _argumentum a fero_ can show in a
Vedic dawn-hymn anything other than a hymn to personified Dawn, or
make it probable that this dawn was ever a mortal's name.

In respect of that which precedes all tradition we, whose task is not
to speculate in regard to primitive religious conceptions, but to give
the history of one people's religious progress, may be pardoned for
expressing no opinion. But without abandoning history (i.e.,
tradition) we would revert for a moment to the pre-Indian period and
point out that Zarathustra's rejection of the _daevas_ which must be
the same _devas_ that are worshipped in India, proves that
_deva_-worship is the immediate predecessor of the Hindu religion. As
far back as one can scrutinize the Aryan past he finds, as the
earliest known objects of reverence, 'sun' and 'sky,' besides and
beside the blessed Manes. A word here regarding the priority of