Hindu Gods and Heroes by Lionel D. Barnett

he religion of the Aryans of India was essentially a worship of spirits sometimes spirits of real persons, sometimes imaginary spirits and that, although in early days it provisionally found room for personifications of natural forces, it could not digest them into Great Gods, and therefore they have either disappeared or, if surviving, remain as mere Struldbrugs. Thus, being heretic in relation to both the Solar Theory and the Vegetation Theory, as everyone must be who takes the trouble to study Hindu nature without prejudice.

Lionel David Barnett CB FBA (21 October 1871 – 28 January 1960) was an English orientalist.

The son of a Liverpool banker, Barnett was educated at Liverpool High School, Liverpool Institute, University College, Liverpool and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a first class degree in classics and was three times a winner of a Browne medal.