A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.54

v1.c8.s2.54

But how differently these songs may be judged according to the line of interpretation taken by a scholar may be shown by contrasting the opinions of two eminent scholars. In his beautiful book, which is still worth reading, “Der Ṛgveda, die älteste Litteratur der Inder,”¹ Ad. Kaegi says of the hymns of the Ṛgveda: “The great majority of the songs are invocations and glorifications of the deities addressed at the time; their key-note is throughout a simple outpouring of the heart, a prayer to the Eternal Ones, an invitation to accept favourably the piously dedicated gift…… To that which a god placed in his soul and caused him to feel: to the impulse of his heart the singer wishes to give eloquent expression.” He admits that also portions of inferior quality are to be found in the collection, “but there is in them all a fresh breath of vigorous primeval poetry. Whoever takes the trouble to transfer himself to the religious and moral thought and action, the poetry and the working of a people and age, in which the first spiritual development of our own race is placed before our eyes at its best, will feel himself attracted in various ways by many of these songs, here through the childlike simplicity, there through the freshness or delicacy of feeling and in other parts by the boldness of metaphor, by the flight of the imagination." Now let us hear what H. Oldenberg, the ingenious and judicious expert on Indian literature, says about these songs in his " Religion des Veda." ¹ He sees already in this " oldest document of Indian literature and religion " "the clear trace of an ever-increasing intellectual enervation." He speaks of the "sacrificial songs and litanies, with which the priests of the Vedic Aryans on a temple-less place of sacrifice, at the sacrificial fires strewn around with grass, invoked their gods—barbarian priests—the barbarian gods, who with horses and chariots came driving through the sky and air in order to feast on the sacrificial cake, butter, and meat, and to imbibe, with the intoxicating soma juice, courage and divine strength. The singers of the Ṛgveda, in a manner inherited of old, composing for the great and pompous .... Soma-sacrifice, do not want to tell of the god whom they are honouring, but they want to praise this god.... So they heap upon him all the glorifying epithets which are at the disposal of the grossly flattering garrulousness of an imagination which loves the bright and the garish." "Such poetry," Oldenberg thinks, "could have arisen only in the exclusive circles of the priestly sacrificial experts."