total sum of gods; but in later writings it is raised to 33,000.[198] The people troubled themselves little about Brahman or the positions which the Brahmans assigned to the gods, their classes or their number. They continued to invoke Indra and Agni, Surya and Aryaman, as their helpers and protectors. The removal of sacrifice was less to be thought of by the Brahmans than the removal of the ancient gods, even if they had maintained the strictest consistency in their conception of Brahman. The Rigveda was mainly a collection of sacrificial chants and ritual. Brahmans no less then Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas were accustomed to invoke the spirits of light in the early dawn, to offer gifts at morning, mid-day, and evening to Agni; to lay wood on the fire, or throw milk and butter into it; above all, to celebrate sacrifices at the changes of the moon or the seasons. It was not these sacrifices only, or the offering of the soma-juice, which the Brahmans retained, but the whole service of sacrifice, for which instructions were found in the sentences of the Veda. The idea that every sacrifice when offered correctly was efficacious, that a magic power resided in it, that the assistance and therefore a part of the divine power or nature was gained by the sacrifice, could not fail to retain the service of sacrifice in full force in the new doctrines. According to this the divine nature was present, and existed in the world in different degrees of purity or dimness, of power or weakness, and owing to the direction taken in the development of the new idea of god, it was especially alive in the sentences and acts of sacrifice; so that the efficacy of the correct sacrifice must apply a portion of the divine nature to the person sacrificing. Hence the invocation of the old gods was allowed to remain; sacrifice to them was still meritorious, and necessary for this world as well as the other.