In addition to such essentially mythological conceptions, we meet in the religious life of this period with an element of more serious aspect in the two gods, on one or other of whom the religious fervour of the large majority of Hindus has ever since concentrated itself, viz. Vishnu and Siva. Both these divine figures have grown out of Vedic conceptions--the genial Vishnu mainly out of a not very prominent solar deity of the same name; whilst the stern Siva, i.e. the kind or gracious one--doubtless a euphemistic name--has his prototype in the old fierce storm-god Rudra, the "Roarer," with certain additional features derived from other deities, especially Pushan, the guardian of flocks and bestower of prosperity, worked up therewith. The exact process of the evolution of the two deities and their advance in popular favour are still somewhat obscure. In the epic poems which may be assumed to have taken their final shape in the early centuries before and after the Christian era, their popular character, so strikingly illustrated by their inclusion in the Brahmanical triad, appears in full force; whilst their cult is likewise attested by the coins and inscriptions of the early centuries of our era. The co-ordination of the two gods in the Trimurti does not by any means exclude a certain rivalry between them; but, on the contrary, a supreme position as the true embodiment of the Divine Spirit is claimed for each of them by their respective votaries, without, however, an honourable, if subordinate, place being refused to the rival deity, wherever the latter, as is not infrequently the case, is not actually represented as merely another form of the favoured god. Whilst at times a truly monotheistic fervour manifests itself in the adoration of these two gods, the polytheistic instincts of the people did not fail to extend the pantheon by groups of new deities in connexion with them. Two of such new gods actually pass as the sons of Siva and his consort Parvati, viz. Skanda--also called Kumara (the youth), Karttikeya, or Subrahmanya (in the south)--the six-headed war-lord of the gods; and Ganese, the lord (or leader) of Siva's troupes of attendants, being at the same time the elephant-headed, paunch-bellied god of wisdom; whilst a third, Kama (Kamadeva) or Kandarpa, the god of love, gets his popular epithet of Ananga, "the bodiless," from his having once, in frolicsome play, tried the power of his arrows upon Siva, whilst engaged in austere practices, when a single glance from the third (forehead) eye of the angry god reduced the mischievous urchin to ashes. For his chief attendant, the great god (Mahadeva, Mahesvara) has already with him the "holy" Nandi--presumably, though his shape is not specified, identical in form as in name with Siva's sacred bull of later times, the appropriate symbol of the god's reproductive power. But, in this respect, we also meet in the epics with the first clear evidence of what