Shining Ones of the Heavens

Deva, from a root meaning to shine, names the class of celestial beings who inhabit svarga, the heavens, in Vedic and Puranic Hindu cosmology, ruled by Indra and including figures the tradition also worships individually as major gods, Agni, Vayu and Surya among them, so that deva functions both as a general class term and as a description any given named god belongs to. Their standing conflict with the asuras, told at length in the churning of the ocean of milk and in scattered episodes across the Puranas, is framed less as good against evil than as a family rivalry: the devas descend from the sage Kashyapa by his wife Aditi, and the asuras from the same father by his wife Diti, making the two camps cousins competing over sacrificial offerings, cosmic precedence and, above all, the amrita that grants immortality. Individual devas retain the personalities and portfolios familiar from Vedic hymnody, Indra as king and wielder of the thunderbolt, Agni as the sacrificial fire, Surya as the sun, and the class as a whole is regularly invoked collectively in ritual even where a specific deity is also named.