personality into which the Jehovah of the Hebrews grew, owing to the historical, practical, and ethical development of the conception. Brahman was not so much above the natural world which he has created by his command, as its lord and master. Brahman was within it and inwoven in it, and yet at the same time outside it, the hollow form of a being, at once self-originating and returning into itself; or as a personal Brahman he was the president of a meaningless council of heavenly spirits. The old deities, the beings who stood first in the scale of emanations from Brahman, surrounded this personal Brahman as a court surrounds a king. Like other beings, they also have their duties assigned to them; some of the old deities are raised into prominence, and to them is given the old mission of conflict against the evil spirits. They are to defend the eight regions of the earth entrusted to their care against the attacks of the Asuras, or evil spirits. At the head of these eight protectors Indra is naturally placed. To his keeping is assigned the most sacred district, the north-east, where beyond the Himalayas is the divine mountain Meru, which illuminates the northern region, and round which move the sun, moon, and constellations. On this mountain, according to the oldest conceptions of the Aryas, Indra has his abode with the spirits of light. Yama is now king of the south-east, where in the old religion his heaven of light lay with the kingdom of the blessed spirits. Varuna, who previously was throned in the height of heaven on the great waters, and sent sickness and death on sinners, is now the deity of the distant ocean. Of the old gods of light, Surya, the sun-god, found a place among the eight protectors of the world, and at his side was Chandra, the moon-god. The remaining regions belong to Vayu the wind-god, and Kuvera, the god of the inundation. Attempts to localise the highest deities, though first carried out in the law book of the priests, are found in the Yajur-veda.[195] Another classification of the gods mentions Indra in the first series, and afterwards the eight Vasus, the "givers of good;" among whom are Agni and Soma, whose apotheosis has been already mentioned--then Rudra, the father of the winds, with the ten Maruts, and after them the spirits of light, the Adityas (the sons of Aditi), of which in the older period seven or eight are enumerated. The hymns of the Veda sometimes mention a total of thirty-three gods, eleven in heaven, eleven in the clouds, and eleven on earth,[196] a total found also among the Aryas in Iran, and afterwards retained by the Buddhists.[197] But the Indians could not remain contented with such a moderate number of gods; the more each deity was deprived of honour, the higher became the total. Even in the Rigveda we find: "Three hundred, three thousand, thirty and nine gods honoured Agni." In the older commentaries this number of 3339 is regarded as the