Saraswati = Minerva.
Siva = Indra; Jupiter.
Skanda = Mars.
Sri = Ceres.
Surya or Arka = Sol, the sun.
Swaha, wife of Agni = Vesta.
Ushasa = Aurora.
Varuna = Neptune, god of the water, the Creek Ouranos.
Viraja or Vaitarini = the river Styx.
Viswakarma = Vulcan, architect of the gods. Yama or Dharmaraja =Minos, the Grecian Pluto.
Many' of the Hindu deities, however, belong to a bygone age, and ceased to be worshipped more than 2000 years ago. Perhaps Agni, Chandra, Indra, Saraswati, Surya, and Yama, among the the old myths, are all that are now renowned ; the other Vedic deities have yielded to Bhawani, Durga, Ganesa, Hanuman, Kali, Krishna, Lakshmi, Prithivi, Rama, Siva, and Vishnu, with many gods of local fame.
The deities of the ancient Greeks were exceed ingly numerous and dissimilar in their character. In Greece and Asia Minor, each of the deities was the paternal god of some city or race, having not only separate rites, but a form of worship widely different. .Each deity had his favourite abode and local attachment : to some valley, or grove, or town, the power and presence of the divinity especially belonged ; and hence in Bimo dal] Thrace we trace the orgies of Bacchus ; in Northern Thessaly, the worship of Apollo ; on the Corinthian shores, the rites of Neptune ; in Argos, the temples of Juno ; and in Ephesus, the worship of Diana. Though acknowledged to be divine out of their' own peculiar domains, yet their worshippers were rather averse to proselyt ism, fearing lest, by an extended communica tion, the local influence of the deity should be weakened. The sacred object of Ephesian wor ship was carefully preserved, from the period of its first formation, through the ages which inter vened, till the demolition of pagan temples, which followed upon the - rise of Christianity. The image consisted of a large block of wood of beech or elm, but, according to some, of ebony or vine, shaped into a likeness of the goddess, and evi dencing its remote antiqUity by the rudeness of its workmanship. The first statues were unshaped blocks and stones ; and hence the word column was generally used by the Greeks to denote a statue. The Greeks identified Baal with Zeus as
they did Astarte with Venus. The heaven-fallen idol of Ephesus was not a representation of the elegant huntress of classic fable, but an Egyptian hieroglyphic, a personification of nature. In this character she was pictured as a woman Wing a number of breasts, to denote, according to Jerome, that, as nature, she was the nurse, the supporter and life of all living creatures.
Similarly, at the present day, amongst the Hindus and other idol-worshippers of British India, shapeless stones and pieces of wood are worshipped in every village. The three famed idols at Jaganath are three shapeless masses of wood, and similar pieces of wood are used as deities on the left bank of the Bhima river. Also every village has its own local deity, and the idol worshipped at Tripati is quite dissimilar from that at Srirangatn. The two gods Indra and Agni, rain and fire, were (3 the chief deities worshipped by the Vedic Aryans. The sovereign of the gods, Indra, the most power ful of the Vedic deities, was the god of the firmament, the hurler of the thunderbolt, wh smote the rain-cloud, and brought down waters, who delighted in the soma juice, in eating, drinking, and war, strong and drunk with wine.
Intim, according to Bunsen (iii. 587, iv. 459) is the prototype of Zeus, and was a personi fication of ether ; soma was offered to him in sacrifice as the regent of the east, identical with Devandra, the king of the Devas. The Erythrina fidgens, the Pari-jata, or fairy locks, is sup posed to bloom in lndra's gardens, and an episode in the Puranas relates the quarrelling of Ruk mini and Satyabliama, the two wives of Krishna, as to the exclusive possession of this flower which Krishna had stolen from the garden. The Gan dharva, in Hindu mythology, a shade, a spirit, a ghost, a celestial musician, are demigods or angels who inhabit Indra's heaven, and form the orchestra at the banquets of the gods. They are described as witnesses of the actions of men, and are GO millions in number.