few hymns are addressed to Rudra, but he is clearly distinguished from
the other Vedic gods. Whereas they are cheerful and benevolent
figures, he is maleficent and terrible: they are gods of the heaven
but he is a god of the earth. He is the "man-slayer" and the sender of
disease, but if he restrains these activities he can give safety and
health. "Slay us not, for thou art gracious," and so the Destroyer
comes to be the Gracious One.[340] It has been suggested that the name
Siva is connected with the Tamil word _civappu_ red and also that
Rudra means not the roarer but the red or shining one. These
etymologies seem to me possible but not proved. But Rudra is different
in character from the other gods of the Rig Veda. It would be rash to
say that the Aryan invaders of India brought with them no god of this
sort but it is probable that this element in their pantheon increased
as they gradually united in blood and ideas with the Dravidian
population. But we know nothing of the beliefs of the Dravidians at
this remote period. We only know that in later ages emotional
religion, finding expression as so-called devil-dancing in its lower
and as mystical poetry in its higher phases, was prevalent among them.

The White Yajur Veda[341] contains a celebrated prayer known as the
Satarudriya addressed to Rudra or the Rudras, for the power invoked
seems to be now many and now one. This deity, who is described by a
long string of epithets, receives the name of Sankara (afterwards a
well-known epithet of Siva) and is blue-necked. He is begged to be
_Siva_ or propitious, but the word is an epithet, not a proper name.
He haunts mountains and deserted, uncanny places: he is the patron of
violent and lawless men, of soldiers and robbers (the two are
evidently considered much the same), of thieves, cheats and
pilferers,[342] but also of craftsmen and huntsmen and is himself "an
observant merchant": he is the lord of hosts of spirits, "ill-formed
and of all forms." But he is also a great cosmic force who "dwells in
flowing streams and in billows and in tranquil waters and in rivers
and on islands ... and at the roots of trees ...": who "exists in
incantations, in punishments, in prosperity, in the soil, in the
threshing-floor ... in the woods and in the bushes, in sound and in
echo ... in young grass and in foam ... in gravel and in streams ... in
green things and in dry things.... Reverence to the leaf and to him
who is in the fall of the