A History of Sanskrit Literature c10.20

c10.20

The religion of the *Yajurveda* may be described as a kind of mechanical sacerdotalism. A crowd of priests conducts a vast and complicated system of external ceremonies, to which symbolical significance is attributed, and to the smallest minutiæ of which the greatest weight is attached. In this stifling atmosphere of perpetual sacrifice and ritual, the truly religious spirit of the *Rigveda* could not possibly survive. Adoration of the power and beneficence of the gods, as well as the consciousness of guilt, is entirely lacking, every prayer being coupled with some particular rite and aiming solely at securing material advantages. As a natural result, the formulas of the *Yajurveda* are full of dreary repetitions or variations of the same idea, and abound with half or wholly unintelligible interjections, particularly the syllable *oṃ*. The following quotation from the *Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā* is a good example: *Nidhāyo vā nidhāyo vā oṃ vā oṃ vā oṃ vā ē ai oṃ svarṇajyotiḥ*. Here only the last word, which means "golden light," is translatable.