rebels, but still evidently gods that continued to have a following. The issue is related to the question of how Zoroaster's own contribution to Iranian religion might be defined. In the older early/mid 20th-century view (so-called reform hypothesis), in which Zoroaster was perceived to be a revolutionary reformer, it was assumed that the daevas must have been the "national" gods (see comparison with Indic usage, below) of pre-Zoroaster-ian Iran, which Zoroaster had then rejected. This attribution to Zoroaster is also found in the 9th/10th-century books of Zoroastrian tradition, and Gershevitch and others following Lommel consider the progression from "national" gods to demons to be attributable to the "genius of Zoroaster". Subsequent scholarship (so-called progressive hypothesis) has a more differentiated view of Zoroaster, and does not follow the unprovable assumption that prehistoric Iranian religion ever had "national" gods (and thus also that the daevas could have represented such a group), nor does it involve hypothetical conjecture of whose gods the daevas might/might not have been. While the progressive hypothesis gives Zoroaster credit for giving Iranian religion a moral and ethical dimension, it does not (with one notable exception) give Zoroaster credit for the development of the daevas into demons. It assumes that the development was gradual, and that a general distrust of the daevas already existed by the time the Gathas were composed. In comparison with Vedic usage Although with some points of comparison such as shared etymology, Indic devá- is thematically different from Avestan daēva. While in the post-Rigvedic Indic texts the conflict between the two groups of devas and asuras is a primary theme, this is not a theme in either the Rigveda nor in the Iranian texts, and therefore cannot have been a feature of a common heritage. The use of asura in the Rigveda is unsystematic and inconsistent and "it can hardly be said to confirm the existence of a category of gods opposed to the devas". Indeed, RigVedic deva is variously applied to most gods, including many of the asuras. Likewise, at the oldest layer, Zoroastrianism's daevas are originally also gods (albeit gods to be rejected), and it is only in the younger texts that the word evolved to refer to evil creatures. And the Zoroastrian ahuras (etymologically related to the Vedic asuras) are also only vaguely defined, and only three in number. Moreover, the daemonization of the asuras in India and the daemonization of the