A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.64

v1.c8.s2.64

¹ *L. de la Vallée Poussin*, ("Le Védisme," Paris 1909, pp. 61 ff., 68) contests this view that the Veda presents "a mythology in the making" and *A. B. Keith*, JRAS., 1909, p. 469, agrees with him. But I did not mean to say that all mythology first arose at the time of the Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā. The beginnings of the Vedic system of mythology and religion doubtless belong to a far earlier period than the compilation of the Saṃhitā. *Those hymns*, however, in which the natural phenomena and the deities embodied in them are as yet scarcely distinguished from one another, hark back to the time of the beginnings of Vedic mythology. This, of course, does not assume that the same thing is true of the whole Saṃhitā, or of the whole of Vedic religion.