The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s4.3

c9.s4.3

The later manuals of domestic rites speak of certain customs and beliefs that are at least as old as the *Rig Veda* and may be even older. The concept of *rita* (cosmic order, right etc.), corresponding to the Chinese *Tao*,¹¹ indicates an ideology which is opposed to the animistic theory that dominates the extant *Rig Veda Samhitā*. Another non-animistic concept is to be found in the doctrine of *tapas* (self-mortification). This is a practice which produces its results even without prayers to the gods. The concept of the Vedic sacrifices betrays likewise a strand of thought which is somewhat independent of the gods. Indeed, the gods themselves are subject to the power of sacrifices and hymns. This sort of mysticism is independent of the gods and will have to be treated as representative of some other forces without which the Vedic complex is not complete. The incidental and almost ignorable references to such beliefs¹² in the *Rig Veda* point but to the other worlds of life and thought, whose *Beziehungen* or relations to the society described in the Vedas, as Simmel or von Wiese would say, cannot be overlooked in a comprehensive treatment of Vedic institutions.