A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.46

v1.c8.s2.46

However, we must not form too exalted an idea of the moral conditions in ancient India, and not picture these to ourselves in such an idyllic manner, as certainly Max Müller has at times done. We hear in the hymns of the Ṛgveda of incest, seduction, conjugal unfaithfulness, the procuring of abortion, as also of deception, theft and robbery. All this, however, proves nothing against the antiquity of the Ṛgveda. Modern ethnology knows nothing of "unspoiled children of nature" any more than it regards all primitive peoples as rough savages or cannibal monsters. The ethnologist knows that a step-ladder of endless gradations of the most widely differing cultural conditions leads from the primitive peoples to the half-civilised peoples, and right up to the civilised nations. (We need not, therefore, imagine the people of the Ṛgveda either as an innocent shepherd people, or as a horde of rough savages, nor, on the other hand as a people of ultra-refined culture.) The picture of culture which is unfolded in these songs, and which Heinrich Zimmer in his still valuable book "Altindisches Leben"¹ has drawn for us in so masterly a manner, shows us the Aryan Indians as an active, joyful and warlike people, of simple, and still partly savage habits. The Vedic singers implore the gods for help against the enemy, for victory in battle, for glory and rich booty; they pray for wealth, heaps of gold and countless herds of cattle, for rain for their fields, for the blessing of children, and long life. As yet we do not find in the songs of the Ṛgveda that effeminate, ascetic and pessimistic trait of the Indian character with which we shall meet again and again in later Indian literature.