Let us take one of the oldest words for god in the Veda, such as deva, the Latin deus. The dictionaries tell you that deva means god and gods, and so, no doubt, it does. But if we always translated deva in the Vedic hymns by god, we should not be translating, but completely transforming the thoughts of the Vedic poets. I do not mean only that our idea of God is totally different from the idea that was intended to be expressed by deva; but even the Greek and Roman concept of gods would be totally inadequate to convey the thoughts imbedded in the Vedic deva. Deva meant originally bright, and nothing else. Meaning bright, it was constantly used of the sky, the stars, the sun, the dawn, the day, the spring, the rivers, the earth; and when a poet wished to speak of all of these by one and the same word—by what we should call a general term—he called them Devas. When that had been done, Deva did no longer mean "the Bright ones," but the name comprehended all the qualities which the sky and the sun and the dawn shared in common, excluding only those that were peculiar to each.
Here you see how, by the simplest process, the Devas, the bright ones, might become and did become the Devas, the heavenly, the kind, the powerful, the invisible, the immortal—and, in the end, something very like the θεοἱ (or dii) of Greeks and Romans.
In this way one Beyond, the Beyond of Nature, was built up in the ancient religion of the Veda, and peopled with Devas, and Asuras, and Vasus, and Âdityas, all names for the bright solar, celestial, diurnal, and vernal powers of nature, without altogether excluding, however, even the dark and unfriendly powers, those of the night, of the dark clouds, or of winter, capable of mischief, but always destined in the end to succumb to the valor and strength of their bright antagonists.
We now come to the second nave of the Vedic temple, the second Beyond that was dimly perceived, and grasped and named by the ancient Rishis, namely the world of the Departed Spirits.[276]
There was in India, as elsewhere, another very early faith, springing up naturally in the hearts of the people, that their fathers and mothers, when they departed this life, departed to a Beyond, wherever it might be, either in the East from whence all the bright Devas seemed to come, or more commonly in the West, the land to which they seemed to go, called in the Veda the realm of Yama or the setting sun. The idea that beings which once had been, could ever cease to be, had not yet entered their minds; and from the belief that their fathers existed somewhere, though they could see them no more, there arose the belief in another Beyond, and the germs of another religion.
Nor was the actual power of the fathers quite imperceptible or extinct even after their death. Their presence continued to be felt in the ancient laws and customs of the family, most of which rested on their will and their authority. While their fathers were alive and strong, their will was law; and when, after their death, doubts or disputes arose on points of law or custom, it was but natural that the memory and the authority of the fathers should be appealed to to settle such points—that the law should still be their will.
Thus Manu says (IV. 178): "On the path on which his fathers and grandfathers have walked, on that path of good men let him walk, and he will not go wrong."
In the same manner then in which, out of the bright powers of nature, the Devas or gods had arisen, there arose out of predicates shared in common by the departed, such as pitris, fathers, preta, gone away, another general concept, what we should call Manes, the kind ones, Ancestors, Shades, Spirits, or Ghosts, whose worship was nowhere more fully developed than in India. That common name, Pitris or Fathers, gradually attracted toward itself all that the fathers shared in common. It came to mean not only fathers, but invisible, kind, powerful, immortal, heavenly beings, and we can watch in the Veda, better perhaps than anywhere else, the inevitable, yet most touching metamorphosis of ancient thought—the love of the child for father and mother becoming transfigured into an instinctive belief in the immortality of the soul.