f accurate reasoning, to have a name, different from
_polytheism_, to signify this worship of single gods, each occupying
for a time a supreme position, and I proposed for it the name of
_Kathenotheism_, that is, a worship of one god after another, or of
_Henotheism_, the worship of single gods. This shorter name of
_Henotheism_ has found more general acceptance, as conveying more
definitely the opposition between _Monotheism_, the worship of one
only God, and _Henotheism_, the worship of single gods; and, if but
properly defined, it will answer its purpose very well. However, in
researches of this kind we cannot be too much on our guard against
technical terms. They are inevitable, I know; but they are almost
always misleading. There is, for instance, a hymn addressed to the
_Indus_ and the rivers that fall into it, of which I hope to read you
a translation, because it determines very accurately the geographical
scene on which the poets of the Veda passed their life. Now native
scholars call these rivers d e v a t a s or deities, and European
translators too speak of them as gods and goddesses. But in the
language used by the poet with regard to the Indus and the other
rivers, there is nothing to justify us in saying that he considered
these rivers as _gods_ and _goddesses_, unless we mean by _gods_ and
_goddesses_ something very different from what the Greeks called
River-gods and River-goddesses, Nymphs, Najades, or even Muses.

And what applies to these rivers applies more or less to all the
objects of Vedic worship. They all are still oscillating between what
is seen by the senses, what is created by fancy, and what is
postulated by the understanding; they are things, persons, causes,
according to the varying disposition of the poets; and if we call them
gods or goddesses, we must remember the remark of an ancient native
theologian, who reminds us that by d e v a t a or deity he means no more
than the object celebrated in a hymn, while _R i_ s h i or seer means no
more than the subject or the author of a hymn.

It is difficult to treat of the so-called gods celebrated in the Veda
according to any system, for the simple reason that the concepts of
these gods and the hymns addressed to them sprang up spontaneously and
without any pre-established plan. It is best perhaps for our purpose
to follow an ancient Brahmanical writer, who is supposed to have lived
about 400 B.C. He tells us of students of the Veda, before hi