y of attributes that they have become identified in
person (AV. x. i. 23). Rudra's title of Pacupati, or 'lord of
cattle'[77] goes back to the Vedic age: "Be kind to the kine of him
who believes in the gods" is a prayer of the Atharva Veda (xi. 2. 28).
Agni and Rudra, in the Rig-Veda, are both called 'cattle-guarding,'
but not for the same reason. Agni represents a fire-stockade, while
Rudra in kindness does not strike with his lightning-bolt. The two
ideas, with the identification of Rudra and Agni, may have merged
together. Then too, Rudra has healing medicines (his magical side),
and Agni is kindest to men. All Agni's names are handed over in the
Br[=a]hmanas to Rudra-Civa, just as Rudra previously had taken the
epithets of P[=u]shan (above), true to his robber-name. To ignore the
height to which at this period is raised the form of Rudra-Civa is
surely unhistorical; so much so that we deem it doubtful whether
Civa-invocations elsewhere, as in the S[=u]tra referred to above,
should be looked upon as interpolations. In the M[=a]itr[=a]yan[=i]
Collection, the Rudrajapas, the invocations to Rudra as the greatest
god, the highest spirit, the lord of beings (Bhava), are expressly to
Civa Girica, the mountain-lord (2. 9; Schroeder, p. 346). In the
[=A]itareya Br[=a]hmana it evidently is Rudra-Civa, the god of ghastly
forms (made by the gods, it is said, as a composite of all the 'most
horrible parts' of all the gods), who is deputed to slay the
Father-god (when the latter, as a beast, commits incest with his
daughter), and chooses as his reward for the act the office of 'lord
of cattle.'[78] This is shown clearly by the fact that the fearsome
Rudra is changed to the innocuous Rudriya in the next paragraph. As an
example of how in the Br[=a]hmanas Rudra-Civa has taken to himself
already the powers of Agni, the great god of the purely sacrificial
period, may be cited Cat. Br. vi. 1. 3. 10 and 2. 1. 12. Here Agni is
Kum[=a]ra, Rudra, Carva (Sarva)[79], Pacupati (lord of beasts),
Bh[=a]irava (terrible), Acani (lightning), Bhava (lord of beings),
Mah[=a]deva (great god), the Lord--his 'thrice three names.' But where
the Br[=a]hmana assumes that these are names of Agni it is plain that
one has Rudra-Civa in process of absorbing Agni's honors.

The third element in the Pur[=a]nic trinity,[80] identified with the
Father-god, genealogically deserves his lower position. His rivals are
of older lineage. The reason for his inferior po