Other goddesses celebrated in the Vedas are Ushas, the great goddess of dawn: Ratri, the personifying starlit night, who holds such an important place in the Vedic pantheon that a special hymn of the Rig Veda is addressed to her as a radiant diety; the goddess of wealth Sri Lakshmi, honored by the Devi- sukta hymn of the Rig Veda; Surya, the Sun-goddess, and Prithivi, the Earth- goddess.

Other female divinities were looked upon as creative powers. The Vedic Gayatri is both a female divinity holding a unique and exalted place and a most sacred mantra. Even today she is venerated, and her mantra is indispensable in an major rite. Sarasvati the great goddess of speech or learning, sometimes also a river- goddess, represents the divine energy or shakti inherent in everything animals, men, gods, the universe. The eight verses of the Devi-sukta hymn which contain this sublime characterization, as well as the Ratri-sukta hymn to Ratri, has a prominent place in the Shakta ritual of later times.

The developed Sakti worship was indebted to the goddess- concepts of the early Vedic age. The very notion of Cosmic Energy at the root of Shakti or Shaktaism is based on the central theme of the Devi sukta. The Epic and Pauranic literature gives innumerable goddess-names to the universal feminine power, and the various goddesses take on distinct iconographic forms. Hundreds of treatises have been written, from 200 A D to the present day, for the consolidation and development of the Shakti cult. None of the texts of the early period has survived to the present, but our knowledge of them is based on the authoritative philosophical and religious works of the post- Buddhist times to about AD 1200. The term Tantra came to be used for such works.