leaders, however diametrically opposed their views may be. And in both cases the effort had a similar result. The object was to reconcile the people to different ideas. The actual consequence was that the ideas of the people, thus admitted, as it were, by the back door, filled the whole mansion, and the ideas it was hoped they would accept were turned out into the desert, there ultimately to pass absolutely away. Nearer home, too, we may call to mind similar events.

Our two poets are naturally anxious to include in their lists all the various beliefs which had most weight with those whom they would fain persuade. The poet of the Maha Samaya (the Great Concourse) enumerates first the spirits of the Earth and of the great Mountains. Then the Four Great Kings, the guardians of the four quarters, East and South and West and North. One of these four, Vessavana Kuvera, is the god who in the second poem is the spokesman for all the rest. (Fig. 39.)

Then come the Gandharvas, heavenly musicians, supposed to preside over child-bearing and birth, and to be helpful to mortals in many ways.

Then come the Nagas, the Siren-serpents, whose worship has been so important a factor in the folklore, superstition, and poetry of India from the earliest times down to-day. Cobras in their ordinary shape, they lived, like mermen and mermaids, beneath the waters,' in great luxury and wealth, more especially of gems, and sometimes, as we shall see, the name is used of the Dryads, 1 See, for instance, Samyutta, vol. v. pp. 47, 63.

the tree-spirits, equally wealthy and powerful. They could at will, and often did, adopt the human form; and though terrible if angered, were kindly and mild by nature. Not mentioned either in

FIG. 41.-NAGA MERMAIDS IN WATER.

[From Burgess and Grünwedel's Buddhist Art in India.]

the Veda or in the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads, the myth seems to be a strange jumble of beliefs, not altogether pleasant, about a strangely gifted race of actual men; combined with notions derived

from previously existing theories of tree-worship, and serpent-worship, and river-worship. But the history of the idea has still to be written. These Nāgas are represented on the ancient bas-reliefs as men or women either with cobra's hoods rising from behind their heads or with serpentine forms from the waist downwards.

Then come the Garulas, or Garudas, the Indian counterpart of the harpy and griffin, half man, half bird, hereditary enemies of the Nagas, on whom they feed. They were also, perhaps, originally a tribe of actual men, with an eagle or a hawk as their token on their banner.

Then come a goodly crowd of Titans, and sixty kinds of gods, of whom only about half a dozen are Vedic, the other names offering only puzzles which await the solution of future enquirers. First we have the gods of kindly nature and good character; then the souls or spirits supposed to animate and to reside in the moon and the sun (the moon is always mentioned first), in the wind, the cloud, the summer heat; then the gods of light; then a curious list of gods, personifications of various mental qualities; then the spirits in the thunder and the rain; and, lastly, the great gods who dwell in the highest heavens (that is, are the outcome of the highest speculation), like Brahmā himself, and Paramatta, and Sanam Kumāra.

The list seems inclusive enough. But why does it make no mention of tree-gods? For if we take as our guide, and we could scarcely do better, Mrs. Philpot's excellent monograph on The Sacred Tree,