History of Classical Sanskrit Literature c5.41

c5.41

“The Veda has two-fold interest : it belongs to the history of the world and to the history of India. In the history of the world, the Veda fills a gap which no literary work in any other languages could fill. It carries us back to times of which we have no records anywhere, and gives us the very words of a generation of men, of whom otherwise we could form but the vaguest estimate by means of conjectures and inferences. As long as man continues to take an interest in the history of his race, and as long as we collect in libraries and museums the relics of former ages, the first place in that long row of books which contains the records of the Aryan branch of mankind, will belong for ever to the *Rig-veda*. The world of the Veda is a world by itself ; and its relation to all the rest of Sanskrit literature is such, that the Veda ought not to receive, but to throw light over the whole historical development of the Indian mind.”