[The Religions of India by Edward Washburn Hopkins]@TWC D-Link book
The Religions of India

CHAPTER VI
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One little poem, rather than hymn, celebrates the 'wood-goddess' in pretty verses of playful and descriptive character.
Long before there was any formal recognition of the dogma that all gods are one, various gods had been identified by the Vedic poets.
Especially, as most naturally, was this the case when diverse gods having different names were similar in any way, such as Indra and Agni, whose glory is fire; or Varuna and Mitra, whose seat is the sky.
From this casual union of like pairs comes the peculiar custom of invoking two gods as one.

But even in the case of gods not so radically connected, if their functions were mutually approximate, each in turn became credited with his neighbor's acts.

If the traits were similar which characterized each, if the circles of activity overlapped at all, then those divinities that originally were tangent to each other gradually became concentric, and eventually were united.
And so the lines between the gods were wiped out, as it were, by their conceptions crowding upon one another.

There was another factor, however, in the development of this unconscious, or, at least, unacknowledged, pantheism.

Aided by the likeness or identity of attributes in Indra, Savitar, Agni, Mitra, and other gods, many of which were virtually the same under a different designation, the priests, ever prone to extravagance of word, soon began to attribute, regardless of strict propriety, every power to every god.


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