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religion of South Asia, 8 there is no need to repeat it here.
I will mention, however, the not so well-known fact, which
will be pertinent to our later study, that even as late as
the end of the first millenium C.E. the orthodox Vedic
tradition regarded such devotional practices as image
worship, which originated outside its fold, with extreme
suspicion. 9
12 The textual, and indeed the only, source of our
knowledge of early Vedic religion is the 峁歡veda, 10 which has
been described as having claim to be "the first literary
masterpiece of the human race."ll As revealed in this text,
the piety of the ancient Aryan peoples is based primarily
upon a reciprocal relationship between the human worshippers
and their deities (devas, "shining ones"), the latter
traditionally reckoned to be 33 in number. The devas are
understood to be intelligent powers that animate and control
various aspects of nature and maintain the cosmic order. No
supreme personal deity, however, is recognized by the early
hymns of the RV. The term "polytheism" is therefore
commonly applied to Vedic religion, and it is roughly
appropriate. Max Muller preferred the term "henotheism" (or
"kathenotheism"), which he coined for the purpose, because
individual hymns frequently address the particular deva
being invoked as if it, for the moment, were supreme. As we
shall see, the later hymns of the RV tend to subordinate the