would appear to have been compiled round about the age of Christ; although through certain surreptitious rites like kāka-bali or offerings to crows and other birds, something analogous to the pūjā was being given a place in the Gṛihya or domestic rites of the blue-blooded Aryan householders. The Gitā passage (IX. 26) runs thus:

"If anyone offers me with devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit, and water, I receive that, offered in devotion by the person whose soul is disciplined."

The context makes it clear that here we have an apology for non-Vedic worship vis-à-vīs the Vedic fire-sacrifice: this verse, in fact, forms the great charter for the pūjā ritual within the milieu of Vedic Brahmanism.

The acceptance of pre-Aryan (Dravidian) ritual meant also the acceptance of the conception of the divinity and of the mythological figures of the gods and goddesses which were current among them. In mediaeval and modern Hinduism, certain divinities stand paramount like Śiva and Umā, Vishṇu (specially in his incarnations of Rāma and Kṛishṇa) and Śrī, together with some other gods and goddesses of a secondary character who claim the homage of the people like Hanumant, GaṇeŚa and Śītalā. The popular gods of the Vedic Aryans-Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, Soma, Sūrya, Ushas, Pūshan, Parjanya and the rest-gradually recede into the background, and a group of more puissant and more personal gods, more profound and cosmic and more philosophical in their conception, the Puranic gods of Hinduism headed by Śiva-Umā and Śri Vishṇu, become established. As it has been said before, Śiva and Umā are in all likelihood fundamentally of Dravidian origin, and as such, they are the Indian modification-and philosophic sublimation-of the great Mother-Goddess and her consort of the Mediterranean peoples. The name Śiva has been explained as being at least partly of Dravidian origin: in Tamil, for instance, Śivan (Chivan) means red, and the divinity was known to the early Aryans as Nīla-lohita "the Red One with blue (throat)" (referring to the legend found in the Purāṇas of later times and unquestionably mentioned in Rgveda, (X. 130, vii), of Śiva having drunk up the world poison and preserved it in his throat which became marked with blue for this). Śambhu, another common name or epithet of Śiva, has been compared with the Tamil chempu or Śembu meaning "copper," i.e. "the red metal." Śiva and the Vedic Rudra have been identified: it is just likely that the name of the