Vishṇu has altered immensely since last we met him. First, after an extraordinary change in his own character, he has been identified with Nārāyaṇa, and then both of them have been equated with Kṛishṇa. The development is so portentous that it calls for a little study. We have seen that in the Vēdas Vishṇu appears to be, and in the Brāhmaṇas certainly is, the embodied Spirit of the Sacrifice, and that ritual mysticism has invented for him a supreme home in the highest heaven. But in the Epics he has developed into a radiant and gracious figure of ideal divinity, an almighty saviour with a long record of holy works for the salvation of mankind, a god who delights in moral goodness as well as in ritual propriety, and who from time to time incarnates himself in human or animal form so as to maintain the order of righteousness. Symbolism has further endowed him with a consort, the goddess Śrī or Lakshmī, typifying fortune; sometimes also he is represented with another wife, the Earth-goddess. The divine hawk or kite Garuḍa, who seems to have been originally the same as the eagle who in the Ṛigvēdic legend carried off the sōma for Indra, has been pressed into his service; he now rides on Garuḍa, and bears his figure upon his banner. I have already suggested a possible explanation of this evolution (above, p. 41): owing to his close association with Indra, the most truly popular of Ṛigvēdic deities, the laic imagination transfused some of the live blood of Indra into the veins of the priestly abstraction Vishṇu. To the plain man Indra was very real; and as he frequently heard tales of Indra being aided in his exploits by Vishṇu, he came to regard Vishṇu as a very present helper in trouble. The friend of Indra became the friend of mankind. The post of Indra had already been fixed for him by the theologians; but the functions of Vishṇu, outside the rituals, were still somewhat vaguely defined, and were capable of considerable expansion. Here was a great opportunity for those souls who were seeking for a supreme god of grace, and were not satisfied to find him in Śiva; and they made full use of it, and wholly transformed the personality of Vishṇu.