s the thirty-fourth; but this Praj[=a]pati is the All
and Everything (_Cat. Br_. i. 6. 4. 2; iv. 5. 7. 2 ff.). Of these
gods, who at first were all alike and good, three became superior,
Agni, Indra, and S[=u]rya. But, again, the Sun is death, and Agni is
head of all the gods. Moreover, the Sun is now Indra; the Manes are
the seasons, and Varuna, too, is the seasons, as being the year (_Cat.
Br._ iv. 5. 4. 1; i. 6. 4. 18; iv. 4. 5. 18). Aditi, as we have said,
is the Earth; the fee for an offering to her is a cow. Why? Because
Earth is a cow and Aditi is Earth; Earth is a mother and a cow is a
mother. Hence the fee is a cow.[31]

The tales of the gods, for the most part, are foolish. But they show
well what conception the priests had of their divinities.

Man's original skin was put by the gods upon the cow; hence a cow runs
away from a man because she thinks he is trying to get back his skin.
The gods cluster about at an oblation, each crying out 'My name,'
_i.e._, each is anxious to get it. The gods, with the evil
spirits--'both sons of the Father'--attract to themselves the plants;
Varuna gets the barley by a pun. They build castles to defend
themselves from the evil spirits. Five gods are picked out as worthy
of offerings: Aditi, Speech, Agni, Soma, the Sun (five, because the
seasons are five and the regions are five). Indra and Wind have a
dispute of possession; Praj[=a]pati, the Father, decides it. The
heavenly singers, called the Gandharvas, recited the Veda to entice
(the divine female) Speech to come to them; while the gods, for the
same purpose, created the lute, and sang and played to her. She came
to the gods; hence the weakness of women in regard to such things.
Indra is the god of sacrifice; the stake of the sacrifice is Vishnu's;
V[=a]yu (Wind) is the leader of beasts; Bhaga is blind;[32] P[=u]shan
(because he eats mush) is toothless. The gods run a race to see who
shall get first to the sacrifice, and Indra and Agni win; they are the
warrior-caste among the gods, and the All-gods are the people (_vicve,
vic._). Yet, again, the Maruts are the people, and Varuna is the
warrior-caste; and, again, Soma is the warrior-caste. The Father-god
first created birds, then reptiles and snakes. As these all died he
created mammalia; these survived because they had food in themselves;
hence the Vedic poet says 'three generations have passed away.'[33]

Varuna is now quite the god of night and god of purification, as