Scherman's only error is in disputing the generally-received opinion, one that is on the whole correct, that Yama in the early period is a kindly sovereign, and in later times becomes the dread king of horrible hells.

Despite some testimony to the contrary, part of which is late interpolation in the epic, this is the antithesis which exists in the works of the respective periods.
The most important gods of the era of the Rig Veda we now have reviewed.

But before passing on to the next period it should be noticed that no small number of beings remains who are of the air, devilish, or of the earth, earthy.

Like the demons that injure man by restraining the rain in the clouds, so there are _bh[=u]ts_, ghosts, spooks, and other lower powers, some malevolent, some good-natured, who inhabit earth; whence demonology.

There is, furthermore, a certain chrematheism, as we have elsewhere[20] ventured to call it, which pervades the Rig Veda, the worship of more or less personified things, differing from pantheism in this,[21] that whereas pantheism assumes a like divinity in all things, this kind of theism assumes that everything (or anything) has a separate divinity, usually that which is useful to the worshipper, as, the plough, the furrow, etc.