.

However the new dogma may have answered the purposes of speculative
minds, it was not one in which the people generally were likely to have
been much concerned; an abstract, colourless deity like Brahma could
awake no sympathies in the hearts of those accustomed to worship gods of
flesh and blood. Indeed, ever since the primitive symbolical worship of
nature had undergone a process of disintegration under the influence of
metaphysical speculation, the real belief of the great body of the
people had probably become more and more distinct from that of the
priesthood. In different localities the principal share of their
affection may have been bestowed on one or another of the old gods who
was thereby raised to the dignity of chief deity; or new forms and
objects of belief may have sprung up with the intellectual growth of the
people. In some cases even the worship of the indigenous population
could hardly have remained without exercising some influence in
modifying the belief of the Aryan race. In this way a number of local
deities would grow up, more or less distinct in name and characteristics
from the gods of the Vedic pantheon. There is, indeed, sufficient
evidence to show that, at a time when, after centuries of theological
speculations, some little insight into the life and thought of the
people is afforded by the literature handed down to us, such a diversity
of worship did exist. Under these circumstances the policy which seems
to have suggested itself to the priesthood, anxious to retain a firm
hold on the minds of the people, was to recognize and incorporate into
their system some of the most prominent objects of popular devotion, and
thereby to establish a kind of catholic creed for the whole community
subject to the Brahmanical law. At the time of the original composition
of the great epics two such deities, _Siva_ or _Mahadeva_ ("the great
god") and _Vishnu_, seem to have been already admitted into the
Brahmanical system, where they have ever since retained their place; and
from the manner in which they are represented in those works, it would,
indeed, appear that both, and especially the former, enjoyed an
extensive worship. As several synonyms are attributed to each of them,
it is not improbable that in some of these we have to recognize special
names under which the people in different localities worshipped these
gods, or deities of a similar nature which, by the agency of popular
poetry, or in some oth