ars, and are his constant
companions. Siva has more than a thousand names which are detailed at
length in the sixty-ninth chapter of the Siva Purana."--WILLIAMS'S
DICTIONARY, _Siva_.

Apsarases.

"Originally these deities seem to have been personifications of the
vapours which are attracted by the sun, and form into mist or clouds:
their character may be thus interpreted in the few hymns of the Rigveda
where mention is made of them. At a subsequent period when the Gandharva
of the Rigveda who personifies there especially the Fire of the Sun,
expanded into the Fire of Lightning, the rays of the moon and other
attributes of the elementary life of heaven as well as into pious acts
referring to it, the Apsarasas become divinities which represent phenomena
or objects both of a physical and ethical kind closely associated with
that life; thus in the _Yajurveda_ Sunbeams are called the Apsarasas
associated with the Gandharva who is the Sun; Plants are termed the
Apsarasas connected with the Gandharva Fire: Constellations are the
Apsarasas of the Gandharva Moon: Waters the Apsarasas of the Gandharva
Wind, etc. etc.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} In the last Mythological epoch when the Gandharvas have
saved from their elementary nature merely so much as to be musicians in
the paradise of Indra, the Apsarasas appear among other subordinate
deities which share in the merry life of Indra's heaven, as the wives of
the Gandharvas, but more especially as wives of a licentious sort, and
they are promised therefore, too, as a reward to heroes fallen in battle
when they are received in the paradise of Indra; and while, in the
Rigveda, they assist Soma to pour down his floods, they descend in the
epic literature on earth merely to shake the virtue of penitent Sages and
to deprive them of the power they would otherwise have acquired through
unbroken austerities."--GOLDSTUeCKER'S _Sanskrit Dictionary_.

Vishnu's Incarnation As Rama.

"Here is described one of the _avatars_, descents or manifestations of
Vishnu in a visible form. The word _avatar_ signifies literally _descent_.
The _avatar_ which is here spoken of, that in which, according to Indian
traditions, Vishnu descended and appeared upon earth in the corporeal form
of Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, is the seventh in the series of Indian
_avatars_. Much has been said before now of these avatars, and through
deficient knowledge of the ideas and doctrines of India, they have