ck of this process we cannot say.

Now we may leave the heroes and consider a god of a very different
kind, Vishnu.

The Rig-veda has not very much to say about Vishnu, and what it says
is puzzling. The poets figure him as a beneficent young giant, of
unknown parentage, with two characteristic attributes: the first of
these is his three mystic strides, the second his close association
with Indra. Very often they refer to these three strides, sometimes
using the verb _vi-kram_, "to step out," sometimes the adjectives
_uru-krama_, "widely-stepping," and _uru-gaya_, "wide-going." The
three steps carry Vishnu across the three divisions of the universe,
in the highest of which is his home, which apparently he shares with
Indra (RV. I. xxxii. 20, cliv. 5-6, III. lv. 10; cf. AB. I. i., etc.).
Some of them are beginning to imagine that these steps symbolise the
passage of the sun through the three divisions of the world, the
earth, sky, and upper heaven; certainly this idea will be held by many
later scholars, though a few will maintain that it denotes the sun at
its rising, at midday, and at its setting. Before long we shall find
some priests harping on the same notion in another form, saying that
Vishnu's head was cut off by accident and became the sun; and later on
we shall see Vishnu bearing as one of his weapons a chakra, or discus,
which looks like a figure of the sun. But really all this is an
afterthought: in the Veda, and the priestly literature that follows
directly upon the Veda, Vishnu is _not_ the sun. Nor do we learn what
he is very readily from his second leading attribute in the Rig-veda,
his association with Indra. Yet it is a very clearly marked trait in
his character. Not only do the poets often couple the two gods in
prayer and praise, but they often tell us that the one performed his
characteristic deeds by the help of the other. They say that Vishnu
made his three strides by the power of Indra (VIII. xii. 27), or for
the sake of Indra (Val. iv. 3), and even that Indra strode along with
Vishnu (VI. lxix. 5, VII. xcix. 6), and on the other hand they tell us
often that it was by the aid of Vishnu that Indra overcame Vritra and
other malignant foes. "Friend Vishnu, stride out lustily," cries Indra
before he can strike down Vritra (IV. xviii. 11).[14] The answer to
this riddle I find in the Brahmanas, the priestly literature which is
about to follow immediately after the Veda. In plain unequivocal words
the B