Vedas
The Vedas, the earliest comprehensive literature, contain mantras for pleasing the Devas to obtain blessings. The Rig Veda, the earliest of the four, enumerates up to 33 Devas.
Some Devas represent the forces of nature and some represent moral values (such as the Adityas/Asuras Varuna and Mitra). The main Devas addressed in the Rig Veda are Indra, Agni (fire) and Soma, the latter two representing modes of sacrifice, called yagna. The post-Rig vedic Aitareya Brahmana in its opening stanza suggests a hierarchy among Devas. Many of the deities taken together are worshiped as the Vishvedevas, the "all-deities". Varuna has the dual epithet of Deva and Asura. Ishwara is the only god.
Savitŗa, Vishnu, Rudra are Demi-Gods and (later given the exclusive epithet of Shiva, "auspicious one"), Prajapati (later identified with Brahmā), and devis (female deities) such as Ushas (dawn), Prithvi (earth) and Sarasvati.
Read more about this topic: Deva (Hinduism)
Famous quotes containing the word vedas:
“That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“True Bramin, in the morning meadows wet,
Expound the Vedas of the violet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)