Thirdly, there are few hymns which place the original character of the so-called deities to whom they are addressed in so clear a light as the hymns addressed to the Maruts or Storm-gods. There can be no doubt about the meaning of the name, whatever difference of opinion there may be about its etymology. Marut and maruta in ordinary Sanskrit mean wind, and more particularly a strong wind, differing by its violent character from vâyu or vâta a. Nor do the hymns themselves leave us in any doubt as to the natural phenomena with which the Maruts are identified. Storms which root up the trees of the forest, lightning, thunder, and showers of rain, are the background from which the Maruts in their personal and dramatic character rise before our eyes. In one verse the Maruts are the very phenomena of nature as convulsed by a thunderstorm; in the next, with the slightest change of expression, they are young men, driving on chariots, hurling the thunderbolt, and crushing the clouds in order to win the rain. Now they are the sons of Rudra and Prisni, the friends and brothers of Indra, now they quarrel with Indra and claim their own rightful share of praise and sacrifice. Nay, after a time the storm-gods in India, like the storm-gods in other countries,

obtain a kind of supremacy, and are invoked by themselves, as if there were no other gods beside them. In most of the later native dictionaries, in the Medinî, Visva, Hemakandra, Amara, and Anekârthadhvanimañgari, Marut is given as a synonym of deva, or god in general a, and so is Maru in Pâli.