nor air, nor light, nor atoms, nor soul, nor nature: he is above all these and the cause of them all. He 'has no feet, hut extends everywhere; has no hands, but holds everything; has no eyes, yet sees all that is; has no ears, yet hears all that passes. His existence had no cause. He is the smallest of the small and the greatest of the great; and yet is, in fact neither small nor great.' Such is the doctrine of the Vedas in its purest and most abstract form; but the prevailing theology which runs through them is what is called Pantheism, or that system which speaks of God as the soul of the universe, or as the universe itself. Accordingly, the whole tone and language of the highest Hindoo philosophy is Pantheistic. As a rope, lying on the ground, and mistaken at first view for a snake, is the cause of the idea or conception of the snake which exists in the mind of the person looking at it, so, say the Vedas, is the Deity the cause of what we call the universe. 'In him the whole world is absorbed; from him it issues; he is entwined and interwoven with all creation.' 'All that exists is God: whatever we smell, or taste, or see, or hear, or feel, is the Supreme Being.'
This one incomprehensible Being, whom the Hindoos designate by the mystical names Om, Tut, and Jut, and sometimes also by the word Brahm, is declared by the Vedas to be the only proper object of worship. Only a very few persons of extraordinary gifts and virtues, however, are able, it is said, to adore the Supreme Being—the great Om—directly. The great majority of mankind are neither so wise nor so holy as to be able to approach the Divine Being himself, and worship him. It being alleged that persons thus unfortunately disqualified for adoring the invisible Deity should employ their minds upon some visible thing, rather than to suffer them to remain idle, the Vedas direct them to worship a number of inferior deities, representing particular acts or qualities of the Supreme Being; as, for instances, Crishnu or Vishnu, the god of preservation; Muhadev, the god of destruction; or the sun, or the air, or the sea, or the human understanding; or, in fact any object or thing which they may choose to represent as God. Seeing, say the Hindoos, that God pervades and animates the whole universe, everything, living or dead, may he considered a portion of God, and as such, it may be selected as an object of worship, provided always it be worshiped only as constituting a portion of the Divine Substance. In this way, whatever the eye looks on, or the mind can conceive, whether it be the sun in the heavens or the great river Ganges, or the crocodile on its banks, or the cow, or the fire kindled to cook food, or the Vedas, or a Brahmin, or a tree, or a serpent—all may be legitimately worshiped as a fragment, so to speak, of the Divine Spirit. Thus there may be many millions of gods to which Hindoos think themselves entitled to pay divine honours. The number of Hindoo gods is calculated at 330,000,000, or about three times the number of their worshipers.
Of these, the three principal deities of the Hindoos are Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Seeb or Siva the destroyer. These three of course, were originally intended to represent the three great attributes of the Om or Invisible Supreme Being—namely, his creating, his preserving, and his destroying attributes. Indeed the name Om itself is a compound word, expressing the three ideas of creation, preservation, and destruction, all combined. The three together are called Trimurti, and there are certain occasions when the three are worshiped conjointly. There are also sculptured representations of the Trimurti, in which the busts of Brah-
