The aim of the author is to present to that class of readers who take interest in questions of historical theology, but who happen to have no special acquaintance with Indology studies. India has not only preserved in her Vedas, the most ancient and complete documents for the study of the old religious beliefs founded on nature worship, which is an extremely remote past, were common to all the branches of the Indo-European family. India is also the only country where these beliefs, in spite of many changes both in form and fortune, continue to subsist up to the present time. The author proposes, however, to be more minute in what relates to the Vedas, out of regard to their exceptional importance, since the whole religious thought of India already exists in germ in these old books.<-p>