A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c9.2

c9.2

Having assigned to the Sûtra literature of India the wide limits of a period extending from 600 to 200 B.C., we have now to examine another and confessedly more ancient class of Vedic writings, differing in style both from the Sûtras, which are posterior, and from the Mantras, which are anterior to them. These are called by the comprehensive name of Brâhmaṇas. But as between the Sûtras and the later Sanskrit literature we discovered a connecting link in the writings known under the name of Pariśiṣṭas, so we meet on the frontier between the Brâhmaṇa and the Sûtra literature, with a class of works, intermediate between the Brâhmaṇas and Sûtras, which claim to be considered first. These are the Âraṇyakas, or "The Treatises of the Forest."