A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c10.161

c10.161

There seems thus to be little room for doubt, if we consider the character of this and similar hymns, that we must make a distinction between two periods in the history of Vedic poetry, the one primitive, the other secondary. Poems, like those which we have just examined, are not the result of an original, free, and unconscious inspiration. They belong to an imitative, reflecting, and criticising age. An exact division between the ancient and the modern portions of the Rig-veda will probably be impossible even after these ancient relics have been studied with a much more searching accuracy than hitherto. The language which might be expected to contain the safest indications of the more ancient or more modern date of certain hymns, has, owing to the influence of oral tradition, assumed an uniformity which baffles the most careful analysis. Nor would it be safe to trust to our preconceived notions as to the peculiar character of genuine and of artificial poetry. Some of the very latest poets may have been endowed with a truly poetical genius, when the originality and freshness of their thoughts would seem to place them in a better age. Nor is the fact that the ancient poets enunciate thoughts entirely their own, and with the full consciousness that what they say has never been said before, sufficient to give to all their productions so deep a stamp of truth and faith that our weakened eyes should always discern it. But although we may hesitate about single hymns, whether they are the productions of ancient or modern Rishis, we cannot hesitate as to the general fact that the ten books of the Rig-veda at the time they were finally collected, comprised the poetry of two different periods. This is the only important point for our purpose. We ascribe the later poets of the Veda to the Mantra period, so that we comprise within that period two apparently distinct, yet, in reality, very cognate tendencies. We suppose that the Mantra period was an age of Epigonoi, occupied at first in imitating the works of their fathers, and towards the end engaged in the more useful employment of collecting all that was within reach, modern as well as ancient, and handing it down to the careful guardianship of later generations. Two hundred years will not be too long a time for the gradual progress of this work. There are several generations of modern poets, and probably two classes of collectors to be accommodated, and the work of the last collectors, the collectors of the Maṇḍalas, could not have commenced before the last line of every poem which now forms part of the ten Maṇḍalas was written. I therefore fix the probable chronological limits of the Mantra period between 800 and 1000 B.C.