Indra, for example, is invoked in the Rig Veda to 'be a friend, be a father, be more fatherly than the fathers';[29] but this implies no patristic side in Indra, who is called in the same hymn (vs.

4) the son of Dyaus (his father); and Dyaus Pitar no more implies, as say some sciolists, that Dyaus was regarded as a human ancestor than does 'Mother Earth' imply a belief that Earth is the ghost of a dead woman.
In the Veda there is a nature-religion and an ancestor-religion.

These approach, but do not unite; they are felt as sundered beliefs.
Sun-myths, though by some denied _in toto_, appear plainly in the Vedic hymns.

Dead heroes may be gods, but gods, too, are natural phenomena, and, again, they are abstractions.

He that denies any one of these sources of godhead is ignorant of India.
Mueller, in his _Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, has divided Vedic literature into four periods, that of _chandas_, songs; _mantras_, texts; _br[=a]hmanas;_ and _s[=u]tras_.