There is also a host of storm fiends, called “the running ones” on account of the headlong course of the fiends in a storm—“the onsets of the wounding crew.” The Devas represent demons which belong to the Indo- European mythology, and the term originally meant “the gods in heaven.” When they were converted into evil spirits they became “the fiends in the heavens” or the fiends who assail the sky, but they afterwards became the demons of lust and doubt. Death gave rise to several abstractions, such as Saurū, which was identical in meaning as well as name with the Vedic Sarū, “the arrow,” a personification of the arrow of death, as a god-like being. The same idea is conveyed by Iśus, the self- moving arrow, a designation which is perhaps accounted for from the fact that Sarū, in India, before becoming the arrow of death, was the arrow of lightning, with which the god killed his foe. The god of death in another form becomes “the bone divider” who, like the Yama of the Mahā- bhārata, holds a noose around the neck of all living creatures. In the conflict between gods and fiends he takes an active part through the sacrifice. The sacrifice is more than an act of worship, it is an act of assistance to the gods. Gods, like men, need drink and food to be strong; like men, they need praise and encouragement in order to be brave; when not strengthened by the sacrifice they fly before their foes. Sraosha is the priest-god, he first tied the sticks into bundles and offered up sacrifice to Ahūra; he first sang the holy hymns and thrice each day and night he smites the demon crew with his uplifted club, and thus protects the world of the living from the terrors of the night, when the fiends rush upon the earth; it is he who protects the dead from the terrors of death, from the assault of Ahriman. It will be through a sacrifice performed by Ormazd and Sraosha that Ahriman will finally be vanquished. A number of divinities sprang from the hearth of the altar, most of them having existed during the Indo-Īrānian period. Piety, who every day brings her offerings and prayers to the altar, was worshipped in the Vedas as Aramati, the goddess who every morning and evening, being anointed with sacred butter, offers herself up to Agni. She was praised in the Avesta as an abstract genius, but there are yet a few practices which preserve the evident traces of the old myths in relation to her union with Atar, the fire-god. The riches that go up to heaven in the offerings of man, and come down to earth in the gifts of the gods, were deified as Rāta, the gift, Ashi, the felicity, and more vividly in Parendi, the keeper of treasures, who comes on a sounding chariot, a sister to the Vedic Puramdhi.