[127] Like an Egyptian Pharaoh, the rajah is here a god among men. His presence was necessary to ensure the success of rain-bringing ceremonies. There are many other uncatalogued Celestial beings like Tapati in Indian fairyland. In the _Atharva-veda_ there are numerous named and nameless spirits of good and evil, and throughout the Epics references are made to semi-divine beings who haunt streams, lakes, forests, and plains. A _Rigveda_ hymn is addressed to the forest nymph Aranyani. She echoes the voices of man and beast and creates illusions: She mimics kine that crop the grass, She rumbles like a cart at even, She calls The cow, she hews down wood, The man who lingers says, “Who calleth?” O Aranyani will not harm If one will not invade her dwelling, When, having eaten luscious fruit, At her sweet will she turns to slumber. The singing birds are all singing spirits in India as in Europe. The “language of birds” is the language of spirits. When Siegfried, after eating of the dragon's heart, understood the “language of birds”, he heard them warning him regarding his enemies. Our seafarers whistle when they invoke the spirit of the wind. Sir Walter Scott drew attention, in his _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, to the belief that the speech of spirits was a kind of whistling. As we have seen, the wives of Danavas had voices like Cranes; Homer's ghosts twittered like bats; Egyptian ghosts were hooting owls. In India the croaking raven is still a bird of evil omen, as it is also in the West. In the Scottish Highlands the spirits of the dead sometimes appear as birds; so do fairies. The Irish gods and the Celestial Rishis of India take the form of swans, like the “swan maidens”, when they visit mankind. In the Assyrian legend of Ishtar the souls of the dead in Hades “are like birds covered with feathers”. Numerous instances could be quoted to illustrate the widespread association of birds with the spirit world. CHAPTER V Social and Religious Developments of the Vedic Age Aryan Civilization—Tribes and Clans—Villages and Trade—Divisions of Society—Origin of Castes—Rise of the Priestly Cult—Brahmanic Ideals of Life—Brahmanic Students—The Source of Algebra—Samaveda and Yajurveda—Atharva-veda Charms and Invocations—The “Middle Country” the Centre of Brahmanic Culture—Sacred Prose Books—Bold Pantheism of the Upanishads—Human Sacrifice and its Symbolism—Chaos Giant Myth in India, Babylonia, and China, and in Teutonic Mythology—Horse Sacrifices in India, Siberia, Greece, Rome, &c.—Creation the Result of Sacrifice—Death as the Creator and Devourer.