The History of Indian Literature c8.10

c8.10

The origin of the Atharva-Saṃhitá dates also from the period when Brahmanism had become dominant. It is in other respects perfectly analogous to the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, and contains the store of song of this Brahmanical epoch. Many of these songs are to be found also in the last, that is, the least ancient book of the Ṛik-Saṃhitá. In the latter they are the latest additions made at the time of its compilation; in the Atharvan they are the proper and natural utterance of the present. The spirit of the two collections is indeed entirely different. In the Ṛik there breathes a lively natural feeling a warm love for nature; while in the Atharvan there prevails, on the contrary, only an anxious dread of her evil spirits, and their magical powers. In the Ṛik we find the people in a state of free activity and independence; in the Atharvan we see it bound in the fetters of the hierarchy and of superstition. But the Atharva-Saṃhitá likewise contains pieces of great antiquity, which may perhaps have belonged more to the people proper, to its lower grades; whereas the songs of the Ṛik appear rather to have been the especial property of the higher families.∗ It was not without a long struggle that the songs of the Atharvan were permitted to take their place as a fourth Veda. There is no mention made of them in the more ancient portions of the Bráhmaṇas of the Ṛik, Sáman, and Yajus; indeed they only originated simultaneously with these Bráhmaṇas, and are therefore only alluded to in their later portions.