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VEDA demons. From those remote days of nomadic and feudal strife, Vedic inquiry into the secret background of the diversities of the cosmos evolved gradually and without a break, until, in the later centuries of the Upanişads, the pictographic reasonings of mythology and theology had been lett far behind for the abstract devices of metaplıysics. But throughout, through all the transforinations of Indian civilization, the Brāhmanical obsession, whether in the comparatively primitive form of early Āryan magic or in the supreme refinements of the later thought, remained the samne; namely, fixed on the problem of the nature of the force that continually and everywhere presents itself to man under new disguiscs.
The task of fathoming this mystery was approached first in the spirit of an archaic natural science. Through comparison and identification diverse plicnomena were discovered to stem from the same root, and thus to be basically one. Speculative insight, penetrating the constant metamorphoses, thus recognized a ubiquitous power of self-transmutation, which was termed mājā (from the verbal root mā, "to prepare, to forin, to build'') 8 and understood to be one of the characteristic facultics of the supra- and infrahuman world-directing gods and demons. The function of theology then became that of identifying and comprehending the whole series of masks that cach divine power could assume, and labeling these correctly, with correct "names." The names were grouped into invocations and litanies, the function of the sacrificial code being to conjure the named forces litanywise, by means of their proper formulae, and thus harness them to the projects of the human will.
A vivid instance of this variety of inquiry is to be found in the Vedic thcology of Agni, the god of fire. All Vedic sacrifice centered around this divinity, into whose mouth (the fire of the altar) the oblations were poured. As messenger of the gods, he carried sacrifices along lis trail of flame and smoke up to heaven, 8 Cf. supra, p. 19, note 11.
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