Angels-DEVAS

The word

deva

has two distinct meanings, both related to contemporary
angelology. In the first meaning, devas are the demigods of Hinduism
and Buddhism. In the second, devas are the angel-like beings
of Theosophy, which have been adopted into the worldview of the
contemporary New Age metaphysical subculture.
Hindu and Buddhist Devas
Around 1000–1500 B.C. a group of Indo-Europeans invaded India
through the northern mountain passes, destroyed whatever written
records might have remained from the original civilization, and settled
in northern India. The worldview of these invaders, who called themselves
Aryans, was vastly different from what later became Hinduism.
In addition to other changes, the principal gods of the Vedic pantheon
were supplanted by new ones. Because of the tendency of Hinduism to
keep earlier layers of its own tradition, however, the Vedic gods were
retained in the form of lower-level demigods, referred to as devas.
As embodied in such classical Hindu mythological texts as the
Puranas, devas are far more complex than Western angels. Nevertheless,
some devas occasionally perform messenger tasks for the higher
deities, making them comparable to angels. Early Buddhism, on the
other hand, retained a belief in the older divinities of the Vedic pantheon
but denied their importance in helping the aspirant achieve
Buddhism’s ultimate goal—liberation from the cycle of death and
rebirth (i.e., terminating the process of reincarnation). Thus, as in
later Hinduism, the Vedic gods and goddesses—the devas—came to
play a role in Buddhist thought and mythology somewhat comparable
to that of Western angels.