A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.254

v1.c8.s2.254

If we now cast a glance over the varied contents of the Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā, of which I have here tried to give an idea, the conviction forces itself upon us that in this collection we have the fragments of the very oldest Indian poetry, that the songs, hymns and poems of the Ṛgveda which have come down to us are only a fragmentary portion of a much more extensive poetic literature, both religious and secular, of which probably the greater part is irretrievably lost. But as the great majority of these hymns are either sacrificial chants, or were used, or could have been used, as prayers and sacrificial songs, we may assume that these very hymns gave the actual stimulus for collecting and uniting them in one “book.” Yet the collectors, who probably had a purely