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It is interesting to see the remains of the older belief still flourishing in midst of epic pantheism. Although Indra has no such hymn as has S[=udrya, yet is he still lauded, and he is a very real person to the knight who seeks his heaven.[14] In fact, so long as natural phenomena were regarded as divine, so long as thunder was godly, it was but a secondary question which name the god bore; whether he was the 'chief and king of gods,' or Vishnu manifesting himself in a special form. This form, at any rate, was to endure as such till the end of the cycle. There are other Indras. Each cycle has its own (i. 197. 29). But sufficient unto the age is the god thereof. If, relinquishing the higher bliss of absorption, the knight sought only Indra's heaven, and believed he was to find it, then his belief practically does not differ much from that of his ancestor, who accepts Indra as an ultimate, natural power. The question arises whether, after all, the Indraworship of the epic is not rather popular than merely old and preserved. Certainly the reality of the belief seems quite as strong as that of the ever-newly converted sectary. It may be doubted whether the distribution of theological belief is very different in the epic and Vedic ages. Philosophical pantheism is very old in India. The priest believes one thing; the vulgar, another. The priest of the Vedic age, like the philosopher of the next age, and like the later sectarian, has a belief which runs ahead of the popular religion. But the popular religion in its salient features still remains about the same. Arjuna, the epic hero, the pet of Krishna, visits Indra's heaven and stays there five years. It is the old Vedic gods to whom he turns for weapons, till the Çivaite makes Indra send the knight further, to Çiva himself. The old name, king of the Vasus, is still retained for Indra; and though the 'divine weapons,' which are winged with sacred formulae, are said to be more than a match for the gods; though in many a passage the knight and the saint make Indra tremble, yet still appear, through the mists of ascetic and sectarian novelties, Indra's heaven and his grandeur, shining with something of their old glory. Vishnu still shows his solar origin. Of him and of the sun is it said in identical words: "The sun protects and devours all," and " Vishnu protects and devours " (of Vishnu, passim; of the sun, iii. 33. 71). A good deal of old stuff is left in the Forest Book amongst the absurd tales of holy watering places. One finds repeated several times the Vedic account of Indra's fight with Vritra, the former's thunderbolt, however, being now made
