Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c17.s2.23

c17.s2.23

(iv) Perhaps to all previous writers on Vedic chronology, certainly to the present author in his earlier papers, the hymns to Soma Pavamāna have appeared to be amongst the oldest in the Rigveda. For this view there is the obvious argument that both in language and sentiment these hymns are entirely cut off from the later parts of the Rigveda and all later literature. The metre, however, goes to shew that only a few of these hymns can belong to the two earliest periods of the Rigveda: and it therefore seems likely that the number of these hymns has been artificially increased so that they may equal those addressed to Agni and Indra. The hymns are purely of a ritual character: only in the popular Rigveda (ix 113) do we find the doctrine of immortality associated with the worship of Soma, as in Greece with that of Dionysus.