A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c11.12

c11.12

There is nothing striking, nothing that displays any warmth of feeling or power of expression in this hymn. The number of thirty-three, assigned to the gods of Manu, would rather tend to refer its composition to a time when the gods of old had been gathered up and been subjected to a strict census. Nevertheless, the hymn is simple and primitive in thought and language; and the fact of its being ascribed to Manu Vaivasvata shows that the Brahmans themselves looked upon it as a relic of one of their earliest sages. That Manu himself should be mentioned in the hymn seems to have caused no scruple to the Brahmans; nor is it any real difficulty from our own point of view. No man of the name of Manu ever existed. Manu was never more than a name—one of the oldest names for man; and it was given in India, as elsewhere, to the supposed ancestor or ancestors of the human race. The Brahmans, however, like most Aryan nations, changed the appellative into a proper name. They believed in a real Manu, or in several real Manus, to whom they assigned various cognomina, such as Vaivasvata, Âpsava (Rv. ix. 7. 3), Sâmvaraṇa (Rv. ix. 6. 5). All of these they naturally counted as among the earliest of human Ṛishis; and the hymns which they ascribed to them must have belonged in their eyes to the earliest and most important class.