Buddhism's devas are the most instructive thing about its relationship to religion generally: it kept the gods and removed their job. Sakka — Vedic Indra, demoted — appears constantly, usually as a decent and slightly out-of-his-depth interlocutor. Brahma Sahampati has the crucial cameo, begging the newly awakened Buddha to teach when he is inclined not to bother, which is the tradition's way of saying that even the highest god needed the teaching and could not produce it. The practical upshot across Asia is that Buddhism never had to abolish local gods to move into a country. It just outranked them.