Deva Hinduism: Encyclopedia II - Deva Hinduism - Vedic religion

Deva Hinduism - Vedic religion

The Vedas, the earliest comprehensive literature of the Indo-European people, contain mantras for pleasing the devas to obtain blessings. The Rig Veda, the earliest of the four, enumerates 33 devas, which in later Hinduism became exaggerated to 330 million, likely because the same Sanskrit word means "ten million" and "class, group", i.e. "33 types of divine manifestations".

Some devas represent the forces of nature and some represent moral values. The main deva addressed in the Rig Veda is Indra. Agni (fire) and Soma represent modes of fire-sacrifice, called yagna, but personified are also seen as devas. All gods taken together are worshipped as the Vishvedevas. Varuna, identified by some to have become the Supreme God of Zoroastrianism Ahura Mazda, has the dual title of deva and asura. There are also other devas like Savitŗ, Vishnu, Rudra (later given the exclusive epithet of Shiva), Prajapati (later called as Brahmā), Mitra, Aryaman, etc and devis (goddesses) like Usha, Prithvi and Saraswati.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Vedic religion", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki