he Veda. The Zend-Avesta represents in its language, as
well as in its thoughts, a branching off from that more primitive
stem; a more or less conscious opposition to the worship of the gods
of nature, as adored in the Veda, and a striving after a more
spiritual, supreme, moral deity, such as Zoroaster proclaimed under
the name of Ahura mazda, or Ormuzd. Buddhism, lastly, marks a decided
schism, a decided antagonism against the established religion of the
Brahmans, a denial of the true divinity of the Vedic gods, and a
proclamation of new philosophical and social doctrines.

Without the Veda, therefore, neither the reforms of Zoroaster nor the
new teaching of Buddha would have been intelligible: we should not
know what was behind them, or what forces impelled Zoroaster and
Buddha to the founding of new religions; how much they received, how
much they destroyed, how much they created. Take but one word in the
religious phraseology of these three systems. In the Veda the gods are
called Deva. This word in Sanskrit means bright,--brightness or light
being one of the most general attributes shared by the various
manifestations of the Deity, invoked in the Veda, as Sun, or Sky, or
Fire, or Dawn, or Storm. We can see, in fact, how in the minds of the
poets of the Veda, deva from meaning bright, came gradually to mean
divine. In the Zend-Avesta the same word daeva means evil spirit. Many
of the Vedic gods, with Indra at their head, have been degraded to the
position of daevas, in order to make room for Ahura mazda, the Wise
Spirit, as the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians. In his confession of
faith the follower of Zoroaster declares: 'I cease to be a worshipper
of the daevas.' In Buddhism, again, we find these ancient Devas, Indra
and the rest, as merely legendary beings, carried about at shows, as
servants of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer
either worshipped or even feared by those with whom the name of Deva
had lost every trace of its original meaning. Thus this one word Deva
marks the mutual relations of these three religions. But more than
this. The same word deva is the Latin deus, thus pointing to that
common source of language and religion, far beyond the heights of the
Vedic Olympus, from which the Romans, as well as the Hindus, draw the
names of their deities, and the elements of their language as well as
of their religion.

The Veda, by its language and its thoughts, supplies that distant
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