Indo-Aryan Deities and Worship as Contained in the Rig-Veda

Nothing has ever so much interested me, as this endeavour to penetrate into the adyta of the ancient Aryan thought, to discover what things, principles or phenomena our remote ancestors worshipped as Gods, what Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, the Acvins, Vayu, Vishnu, Savitri and the others really were, in the conception of the composers of the Vedic hymns. I found the most profound philosophic or metaphysical ideas, which those of every philosophy and religion have merely developed; and that, so far from being Barbarians or Savages, the old Aryan herdsmen and husbandmen, in the Indus country under the Himalayan Mountains, on the rivers of Bactria, and long before, on the Scythic Steppes where they originated, were men of singularly clear and acute intellects, profound thought and an infinite reverence of the beings whom they worshipped.