ing). In this relation he is often terrible,
often beneficent, but with low tastes that it is difficult to explain.
His fondness for soma, without which he attempts nothing, is perhaps a
priestly touch, a glorification of the drink that played so important a
part in the ritual; or he may herein be an expression of popular tastes.
The sensuous character of the heaven of which he (as air-god) is lord
arose doubtless in response to early conceptions of happiness;[1267] it
is not unlike the paradise of Mohammed, which is to be regarded not as
immoral, but only as the embodiment of the existing conception of happy
family life. Yet Indra also became a universal god, the controller of
all things, and it was perhaps due to his multiform human character as
warrior and rain-giver[1268] (in his victorious conflict with the
cloud-dragon), and as representative of bodily enjoyment, that he became
the favorite god of the people. It is not hard to understand why Agni,
fire, should be associated with him and share his popularity to some
extent; but the importance of fire in the sacrifice gave Agni a peculiar
prominence in the ritual.

+732+. The most curious case of transformation and exaltation is found
in the history of Soma, at first a plant whose juice was intoxicating,
then a means of ecstatic excitement, a gift to the gods, the drink of
the gods, and finally itself a god invested with the greatest
attributes. This divinization of a drink was no doubt mainly
priestly--it is a striking illustration of the power of the association
of ideas, and belongs in the same general category with the deification
of abstractions spoken of above.[1269]

+733+. An example of a god leaping from an inferior position to the
highest place in the pantheon is afforded by Vishnu, a nature god of
some sort, described in the early documents as traversing the universe
in three strides. Relatively insignificant in the earlier period and in
the Upanishads, he appears in the epic, and afterwards, as the greatest
of the gods, and, in the form of his avatar Krishna, becomes the head of
a religion which has often been compared with Christianity in the purity
of its moral conceptions. By his side in this later time stands his
rival Civa, the chief figure in a sect or system which shared with
Vishnuism the devotion of the later Hindus. The rise of these two gods
is to be referred probably to the dissatisfaction in the later times
with the phenomenal character whi