In support of this opinion it may be observed that this religion--if indeed Fetissism merit that sacred name--in its earliest form contains no traces of a Godhead or a Creator.[211] It is a systematic worship of the personified elements, productions, and powers of Nature, male and female, and supported by a host of associates and subordinates. Its triad is Indra, the Æther-god; Varuna ([Greek: ουρανος: ouranos]), the Sun-god; and Agni, the Fire-god. The polytheistic triad of the Puranas being then unknown, the Creator, Brahma, appears in the Vedas; the Preserver, Vishnu, inferior to Indra, represents the firmament; and Siwa is proved by Lassen to have been a local god, subsequently admitted by the Brahmans into their vast Pantheon. Still further from man’s belief in those early days is the bold and original thought of the Upanashids and Vedantas, destined so soon to fall before the formulæ of the schools and law-books, the Puranas and other traditions. There Brahm, or the One Almighty, is made the pinnacle of the gorgeous pagoda of belief; the whole universe, matter and spirit, is represented to be the very substance and development of the Demiurgos. In support of their grand Pantheism the Brahma-Sutra declares the human soul to be a portion of the Deity--_divinæ particula auræ_--“the relation not being that of master and servant, but that of the whole and part.” Creation was assumed to be the extension of the Creator’s essence, as the mathematical point produces by its increase length, depth, and breadth by endowing empty space with the properties of figure. From this refined and metaphysical dogma, this theoretical emanation of being from, and its corollary, refusion into, the Soul of the World, springs the doctrine of Metempsychosis, “implying belief in an after-state of rewards and punishments and a moral government of creation.” The votary of Hinduism has now progressed so far as to symbolize the vulgar idolatry of the people. Beneficent animals are explained as symbols of Brahma’s creative and Vishnu’s preserving functions; wild and ferocious beasts are typified as the Deity’s destroying power. They revere men of splendid abilities and glorious actions as having more of the divine essence and a directer emanation than the vulgar herd. Hence the senseless idol worship of the unlearned. Select forms also, as the cleft of a tree, are chosen to represent materially--_oculis subjecta fidelibus_--the passive power of generation, an upright rock expressing the active.