To what extent the changes, which the religious belief of the Aryan classes underwent in post-Vedic times, may have been due to aboriginal influences is a question not easily answered, though the later creeds offer only too many features in which one might feel inclined to suspect influences of that kind. The literary documents, both in Sanskrit and Pali, dating from about the time of Buddha onwards--particularly the two epic poems, the _Mahabharata_ and _Ramayana_--still show us in the main the _personnel_ of the old pantheon; but the character of the gods has changed; they have become anthropomorphized and almost purely mythological figures. A number of the chief gods, sometimes four, but generally eight of them, now appear as _lokapalas_ or world-guardians, having definite quarters or intermediate quarters of the compass assigned to them as their special domains. One of them, Kubera, the god of wealth, is a new figure; whilst another, Varuna, the most spiritual and ethical of Vedic deities--the king of the gods and the universe; the nightly, star-spangled firmament--has become the Indian Neptune, the god of waters. Indra, their chief, is virtually a kind of superior raja, residing in _svarga_, and as such is on visiting terms with earthly kings, driving about in mid-air with his charioteer Matali. As might happen to any earth-lord, Indra is actually defeated in battle by the son of the demon-king of Lanka (Ceylon), and kept there a prisoner till ransomed by Brahma and the gods conferring immortality on his conqueror. A quaint figure in the pantheon of the heroic age is Hanuman, the deified chief of monkeys--probably meant to represent the aboriginal tribes of southern India--whose wonderful exploits as Rama's ally on the expedition to Lanka Indian audiences will never weary of hearing recounted. The Gandharvas figure already in the Veda, either as a single divinity, or as a class of genii, conceived of as the body-guard of Soma and as connected with the moon. In the later Vedic times they are represented as being fond of, and dangerous to, women; the Apsaras, apparently originally water-nymphs, being closely associated with them. In the heroic age the Gandharvas have become the heavenly minstrels plying their art at Indra's court, with the Apsaras as their wives or mistresses. These fair damsels play, however, yet another part, and one far from complimentary to the dignity of the gods. In the epics considerable merit is attached to a life of seclusion and ascetic practices by means of which man is considered capable of acquiring supernatural powers equal or even superior to those of the gods--a notion perhaps not unnaturally springing from the pantheistic conception. Now, in cases of danger being threatened to their own ascendancy by such practices, the gods as a rule proceed to employ the usually successful expedient of despatching some lovely nymph to lure the saintly men back to worldly pleasures. Seeing that the epic poems,