end, and presides over
fiends; nor will they admit that the red on his stones means aught but
blood. In such a god, one has a clue to the gradual intrusion of Civa
himself into Brahmanic worship. At first a mountain lightning fiend,
then identified with Rudra, a recognized deity, then made
anthropomorphic. There are, especially in the South, a host of minor
Hindu deities, half-acknowledged, all more or less of a fiendish
nature in the eyes of the orthodox or even of the Civaite. Seen
through such eyes they are no longer recognizable, but doubtless in
many instances they represent a crude form of nature-worship or
demonology, which has been taken from the cult of the wild
tribes, and is now more or less thoroughly engrafted upon that of
their civilized neighbors.[28]

One of the most interesting, though not remarkable, cases of
similarity between savage and civilized religions is found in the
worship of snakes and trees.[29] In the N[=a]ga or dragon form the
latter cult may have been aided by the dragon-worshipping barbarians
in the period of the northern conquest. But in essentials not only is
the snake and dragon worship of the wild tribes one with that of
Hinduism, but, as has been seen, the tatter has a root in the cult of
Brahmanism also, and this in that of the Rig Veda itself. The
poisonous snake is feared, but his beautiful wave-like motion and the
water-habitat of many of the species cause him to be associated as a
divinity with Varuna, the water-god. Thus in early Hinduism one finds
snake-sacrifices of two sorts. One is to cause the extirpation of
snakes, one is to propitiate them, Apart from the real snake, there is
revered also the N[=a]ga, a beautiful chimerical creature, human,
divine, and snake-like all in one. These are worshipped by sectaries
and by many wild tribes alike. The N[=a]ga tribe of Chota N[=a]gpur,
for instance, not only had three snakes as its battle-ensign, but
built a serpent-temple.[30]

Tree and plant worship is quite as antique as is snake-worship. For
not only is _soma_ a divine plant, and not only does Yama sit in
heaven under his 'fair tree' (above, p. 129), but 'trees and plants'
are the direct object of invocation in the Rig Veda (V. 41. 8); and
the Brahmanic law enjoins upon the faithful to fling an offering,
_bali_, to the great gods, to the waters, and 'to the trees';[31] as
is the case in the house-ritual. We shall seek, therefore, for the
origin of tree-worship not in the c