The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s4.2

c9.s4.2

The complexity and pluralistic make-up of the Vedic literature are suggested from other angles too. It does not require too much of creative imagination to believe that the 1017 hymns collected in the *Rig Veda Saṁhitā* do not constitute all that the people of the period produced in that line. Nobody can be charged with being too suspicious if it is believed that the entire corpus of beliefs of the Vedic tribes is perhaps not to be found in that compilation. The *viṣ* (people) may be taken to have cherished other faiths and created other hymns through other *Ṛiṣis*. Some of those other beliefs are but incidentally referred to in the collection that we possess today.