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The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1: The Veda

The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1

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The Veda

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The word *veda* means literally "knowledge," that is, "sacred knowledge." It is derived from *vid*, "to know," and connected with Greek (*F*)*οἶδα*, Gothic *wait*, German *weiss*, English *wit*, "to know." The term Veda is used in two ways: either as the collective designation of the entire oldest sacred literature of India, or as the specific name of single books belonging to that literature. So then, on the one hand, we speak of *the* Veda as the bible of ancient India; or, on the other hand, we speak of Rig-Veda, Atharva-Veda, etc., as individual books of that great collection. The number of books which, in one sense or another, are counted as Veda is a hundred or more. The Hindus themselves were never very keen about canonicity; quasi-Vedic books, or, as we should say, Pseudo-Vedic books were composed at a very late date, when the various and peculiar sources of early inspiration had dried up; they kept pouring new, mostly sour wine into the old skins. The huge Concordance of the Vedas, which it has been my fate to publish this year (1906), absorbs about 120 texts more or less Vedic.

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It is truly humiliating to students of ancient India to have to answer the inevitable question as to the age of the Veda with a meek, "We don't know." As regards their texture, the books of the Veda claim great antiquity with no uncertain voice. One should like to see this intrinsically archaic quality held up by actual dates; those same, almost fabulous, yet perfectly authentic dates that are being bandied about in the ancient history of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt. The late Professor William D. Whitney left behind the witty saying that Hindu dates are merely ten-pins set up to be bowled down again. This is not altogether so. Buddha died 477 B.C. Alexander invaded India in 326 B.C. In the year 315 B.C. Candragupta, or Sandrakottos, "Alexander-Killer," as Greek writers ominously mouthed over his name, led a successful revolt against Alexander's prefects and established the Maurya dynasty in Pātaliputra, the Palibothra of the Greeks, the Patna of to-day. The most important date in Hindu secular history is that of Candragupta's grandson, the famous Buddhist Emperor Açoka or Piyadassi, who ruled India from north to south around about 250 b.c. His edicts, carved into rock all over his great empire, show us the singular spectacle of a great ruler who used his power to propagate his religion peacefully. His inscriptions upon pillars and rocks boast not of victory or heroic deed; they exhort his people to virtue, warn against sin, and plead for tolerance and love of humanity. This is an important date in the history of India, but an even more important date in the history of good manners.

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Unquestionably a century or two must have passed between the conclusion of the Vedic period and the beginnings of Buddhism. Buddhist literature presupposes Brahmanical literature and religion in a stage of considerable advancement beyond the Vedas. We are, therefore, reasonably safe in saying that the real Vedic period was concluded about 700 b.c. We are further on safe ground in demanding a number of centuries for the much stratified language, literature, and religion of the Veda. But how many? It is as easy to imagine three as thirteen or twenty-three. Only one thing is certain. Vedic ideas are very old. I have noted the fact that the concept *ṛta*, "cosmic or universal order," is found in cut and dried Iranian names in Western Asia as early as 1600 b.c. I am, for my part, and I think I voice many scholars, now much more inclined to listen to an early date, say 2000 b.c., for the beginnings of Vedic literary production, and to a much earlier date for the beginnings of the institutions and religious concepts which the Veda has derived from those prehistoric times which cast their shadows forward into the records that are in our hands. Anyhow, we must not be beguiled by that kind of conservatism which merely salves the conscience into thinking that there is better proof for any later date, such as 1500, 1200, or 1000 b.c., rather than the earlier date of 2000 b.c. Once more, frankly, we do not know.

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Vedic tradition is in some respects the most remarkable in recorded history. From the entire Vedic period we have not one single piece of antiquarian or archæological material, not one bit of real property; not a building, nor a monument; not a coin, jewel, or utensil;—nothing but winged words. Even the manuscripts of these precious texts, splendid as we know their authority to be on inner evidence are of comparatively recent date. We do not know when the Vedas were first committed to writing. Even if they were written down during the Vedic period itself, as I think altogether likely, the early manuscripts were certain to perish in the furious Indian climate. They must, in that case, have been saved by diligent copying and recopying. The majority of the manuscripts upon which are based our editions of Vedic texts date from recent centuries. Manuscripts that date back to the fourteenth century of our era are rare; only a very few go back to the twelfth.

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Here, however, enters one of the curiosities of Hindu religious life. The adherents of a certain Veda or Vedic school, no matter whether the text of that school was reduced to writing or not, must, in theory, know their texts by heart. These are the so-called Çrotriyas or "Oral Traditionalists." They live to this day, being, as it were, living manuscripts of their respective Vedas. The eminent Hindu scholar, the late Shankar Pandurang Pandit, tells us in the preface to his great Bombay edition of the Atharva-Veda how he used three of these oral reciters of the Atharva-Veda out of a total of only four that were at that time still alive in the Dekkhan; and how their oral authority proved to be quite as weighty as the written authority of his manuscripts. These living manuscripts were respectively, Messrs. Bāpujī Jīvanrām; Keçava Bhat bin Dājī Bhat; and Venkan Bhatjī, the last "the most celebrated Atharva Vaidika in the Dekkhan.” Mr. Pandit cites them by *sigla*, quite in the manner of inanimate manuscripts, respectively, as Bp, K, and V. They are, I believe, now all dead.

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We are waiting now for the time when the India Exploration Society shall step out from its existence on paper, and take hold of the shovel and the spade. With bated breath we shall then be watching to see whether great good fortune will make it possible to dig through the thick crust of centuries that are piled upon the Vedic period. If so, it will be something like the revelation of the Mycenæan age that was found at the root of Hellenic civilisation. Until that time Vedic life and institutions, reported only by word of mouth, must remain an uncertain quantity. The hymns of the Veda are to a considerable degree cloudy, turgid, and mystic; taken by themselves they will never yield a clear picture of human life that fits any time or place. We have from the entire Vedic period no annals except priestly annals, or such at least as have been edited by priests. It is as though we relied upon cloister chronicles alone for our knowledge of the politics and institutions of a certain time. Or, to use an even homelier comparison, as though we had to reconstruct the social conditions of a more modern time from an intercepted boarding-school correspondence. The poets, or priestly writers of the Veda are entirely preoccupied with their own interests; if we want anything like secular records of India we must look to a later time.

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We do not even know exactly what a term as familiar as *rāja* (*rēx*) "King," meant in those early days. Was a Rāja a great potentate, or merely a tribal chieftain? We know that the early Vedic period was a cattle-raising age. The lowing of kine was lovely music to the ear of the Vedic poet. But there were also workers in metals, chariots, navigation of some kind, gold, jewels, and trade. This is all too vague, and to some extent introduces uncertain quantities into our estimation of Vedic religion.

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At an unknown date then, as we have had to confess reluctantly, Aryan tribes or clans (*viç*¹) began to migrate from the Iranian highlands to the north of the Hindu-Kush Mountains into the north-west of India, the plains of the river Indus and its tributaries, the Panjab, or the land of the five streams.²

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¹ From this word is derived *vaiçya*, the later name of the third, or agricultural and merchant caste.

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² Professor E. W. Hopkins, *Journal of the American Oriental Society*, vol. xix., pp. 19–28, argues that the majority of the Vedic hymns were composed farther east than the Panjab, in the region of the modern city of Amballa, between the rivers Sarasoutī and Ghuggar.

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The river Ganges, so essential to a picture of India in historical times, and even more bound up with all Western poetic fancies about India, is scarcely mentioned in the Rig-Veda. This same text is full of allusions to the struggles of the fair-skinned Aryas with the dark-skinned aborigines, the Dasyus. The struggle is likely to have been bitter. The spread of Aryan civilisation was gradual, and resulted finally in the up-building of a people whose civilisation was foreign and superior, but whose race quality was determined a good deal by the overwhelmingly large, native, dark-skinned, non-Aryan population. At the beginning of our knowledge of India we are face to face with an extensive poetical literature, in set metres. This is crude on the whole, even when compared with classical Sanskrit literature of later times. Yet, it shows, along with uncouth naïveté and semi-barbarous turgidity, a good deal of beauty and elevation of thought, and a degree of skill bordering on the professional, in the handling of language and metre. That this product was not created out of nothing on Indian soil follows from the previously mentioned close connection with the earliest product of Persian literature, the Avesta.¹ Even the metric types of Veda and Avesta are closely related.

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¹ See above, p. 13.

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Vedic literature, in its first intention, is throughout religious, or it deals with institutions that have come under the control of religion. It includes hymns, prayers, and sacred formulas, offered by priests to the gods in behalf of rich lay sacrificers; charms for witchcraft, medicine, and other homely practices, manipulated by magicians and medicine-men, in the main for the plainer people. From a later time come expositions of the sacrifice, illustrated by legends, in the manner of the Jewish Talmud. Then speculations of the higher sort, philosophic, cosmic, psycho-physical, and theosophic, gradually growing up in connection with and out of the simpler beliefs. Finally there is a considerable body of set rules for conduct in every-day secular life, at home and abroad, that is, a distinct literature of customs and laws. This is the Veda as a whole.

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The Veda consists, as we have seen, of considerably more than a hundred books, written in a variety of slightly differentiated dialects and styles. Some of the Vedic books are not yet published, or even unearthed. At the base of this entire canon, if we may so call it, lie four varieties of metrical composition, or in some cases, prayers in sacred, solemn prose. These are known as the Four Vedas in the narrower sense: the Rig-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sāma-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda. These four names come from a somewhat later Vedic time; they do not coincide exactly with the earlier names, nor do they fully correspond to the contents of the texts themselves. The earlier names refer rather to the different styles of composition, than to canonical collections. They are *ṛcaḥ*, "stanzas of praise"; *yajūṅshi*, "liturgical stanzas and formulas"; *sāmāni*, "melodies"; and *atharvāṅgirasaḥ*, "blessings and curses." The book which goes by the name of Rig-Veda contains not only "stanzas of praise," but—in its later parts—also "blessings and curses," as well as most of the stanzas which form the text to the *sāman*-melodies of the Sāma-Veda. The Atharva-Veda contains *ṛcaḥ*, "stanzas of praise," and *yajūṅshi*, "liturgical stanzas," mostly worked over for its own purposes, as well as its very own "blessings and curses." The Yajur-Veda also contains materials of the other Vedic types in addition to its main topic, the liturgy. The Sāma-Veda is merely a collection of a certain kind of *ṛcaḥ*, or "stanzas of praise," which are derived with some variants and additions from the Rig-Veda, and are here set to music which is indicated by musical notations.

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The Rig-Veda is, on the whole, the oldest as well as the most important of the four collections. Its language is a priestly, very high, or very literary speech. This we may call by distinction the hieratic language of the Veda. It is based upon a very old popular dialect, into which the poets, to serve their own needs, have introduced many new words and speech-forms. So, for instance, the great liking of the hieratic language for verbs derived from nouns, the so-called denominative or denominal verbs, surrounds the style of the Rig-Veda with an air of turgidity and stiltedness which is far from being archaic. A hieratic poet prefers to say "give battle" (*pṛtanāyati*, *pṛtanyati*), rather than "fight"; "cultivate the gods" (*devayati*), rather than "be pious"; "show a kind disposition" (*sumanasyate*), rather than "be friendly," etc.

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A little over 1000 hymns, containing about 10,000 stanzas, equal in bulk to Homer's poems, are divided into ten *mandalas*, "circles," or, as we should say, books. Inside of these books the hymns are arranged according to a regular scheme: first, in the order of the number of hymns addressed to a particular god, beginning with the largest number and continuing in a descending scale. Next, each god's hymns are arranged according to the length of each single hymn, again in a descending scale. Six of these ten books (ii–vii), the so-called "family-books," form the nucleus of the collection. Each of these is supposed to have been composed by a different Rishi, poet or seer, or rather by some family of poets who would fondly derive their descent from such a Rishi. The hymns themselves state this repeatedly—such and such a poet has seen¹ such and such a hymn—: the exact value of this claim is not easily estimated. The names of these traditional Rishis have a good ring in India at all times. They are in the order of Books ii–vii, Gṛtsamada, Viçvāmitra, Vāmadeva, Atri, Bharadvāja, and Vasishtha. The eighth book and the first fifty hymns of the first book are ascribed to the family of Kanva; they are marked off even superficially from the rest, because they are arranged strophically in groups of two or three stanzas. These form the bulk of those stanzas which, set to music, reappear in the Sāma-Veda. The ninth book, a kind of Bacchic collection or text-book, is addressed to the deified plant *soma*, and the liquor pressed from it.² This *soma* drink furnishes by far the most precious libation to the gods. They are supposed to intoxicate themselves with it unto great deeds of valor. The remainder of the first book and the entire tenth book are more miscellaneous in character and problematic as to intention and arrangement. To some extent, though by no means entirely, they are of later origin and from a different sphere, in part of distinctly popular character, very much like and often identical with the hymns of the Atharva-Veda.

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¹ That is, has had revealed to him.

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² See below, p. 145.

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On the whole and in the main, as we shall see, the Rig-Veda is a collection of priestly hymns addressed to the gods of the Vedic Pantheon. The chanting of these hymns is regularly accompanied by libations of the intoxicating drink called *soma*, and of melted butter, or ghee (*ghṛta*). The enduring interest of the Rig-Veda as literature lies in those old priestly poets’ vision of the beauty, the majesty, and the power of the gods, and in the myths and legends told of them, or, more often, merely alluded to in connection with them. But the paramount importance of the Rig-Veda is after all not as literature, but as philosophy. Its mythology represents a clearer, even if not always chronologically earlier stage of thought and religious development than is to be found in any parallel literature. On one side at least it is primitive in conception, and constructive under our very eyes: how a personal god develops by personification out of a visible fact in nature (anthropomorphosis) no literary document in the world teaches as well as the Rig-Veda. The original nature of the Vedic gods, however, is not always clear, not as clear as was once fondly thought. The analysis of these barely translucent, or altogether opaque characters makes up a chapter of Vedic science as difficult as it is important. In any case enough is known to justify the statement that the key-note and engrossing theme of Rig-Vedic thought is worship of the personified powers of nature.

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In order to make good this last statement, and at the same time by way of fore-taste of the Rig-Veda, I present here some stanzas of one of its finest hymns.¹ It is addressed to the goddess Ushas, Dawn personified, whom the Vedic poets sing with special warmth and liking; the metre imitates the original:

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¹ Rig-Veda 1. 113 in *Professor* A. A. Macdonell's translation, in his *History of Sanskrit Literature*, p. 83. I have taken the liberty of making a few slight alterations.

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This light hath come, of all the lights the fairest,

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The brilliant brightness hath been born, far-shining, Urged on to prompt the sun-god's shining power, Night now hath yielded up her place to morning.

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The sisters' pathway is the same unending,

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Taught by the gods, alternately they tread it. Fair-shaped, of different forms, and yet one-minded, Night and Morning clash not, nor yet do linger.

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Bright bringer of delights, Dawn shines effulgent,

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Wide open she hath thrown for us her portals. Arousing all the world, she shows us riches, Dawn hath awakened every living creature.

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'T is Heaven's Daughter hath appeared before us,

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The maiden dazzling in her brilliant garments. Thou sovereign mistress of all earthly treasure, Auspicious Dawn, flash thou to-day upon us!

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On heaven’s frame she hath shone forth in splendor ;
The goddess hath cast off the robe of darkness.
Awakening the world, with ruddy horses,
Upon her well-yoked chariot Dawn approacheth.

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Showering upon it many bounteous blessings,
She spreads her brilliant lustre—all may see her.
Last of the chain of mornings that have passed by,
First of bright morns to come Dawn hath arisen.

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Arise ! the breath of life again hath reached us !
Dread darkness slinks away and light is coming !
She hath blazed a pathway for the sun to travel,
We have found the place where men prolong existence.

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The Rig-Veda presupposes a tolerably elaborate and not uninteresting ritual, or scheme of priestly practices, in connection with the hymns addressed to the gods. How this may be read between the lines of the Rig-Veda’s poetry I hope to show quite clearly later on. The Yajur-Veda represents the exceeding growth of this ritualism, or sacerdotalism, as time went by. Gradually the main object, namely, devotion to the gods, is lost sight of: solemn, pompous performance, garnished with lip service, occupies the centre of the stage. This performance is supposed to have magic or mystic power of its own, so that its every detail is all-important. It regulates mechanically the relation of man to the divine powers by its own intrinsic power, but yet a power controlled and guided by the wonderful technique of the priests, and their still more wonderful insight into the meaning of all the technical acts. A crowd of priests---seventeen is the largest number---conduct an interminable ceremonial full of symbolic meaning down to its smallest minutiæ. The priests seat themselves on the sacrificial ground strewn with blades of sacred *darbha*-grass, and mark out the altars on which the sacred fires are built. They handle and arrange the utensils and sacrificial substances. And then they proceed to give to the gods of the sacrifice, each his proper oblation and his proper share. Even the least and most trivial act has its stanza or formula, and every utensil is blessed with its own particular blessing. These stanzas and formulas, to which a description of the rites is more or less directly attached, make up the numerous redactions of this Veda.

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The Yajur-Veda is a later collection in the main, though it contains much substance that is old, old enough, indeed, to be prehistoric. But like all other Vedic collections, its redaction, at any rate, presupposes the Rig-Veda. A good many verses of the Rig-Veda reappear in the Yajur-Veda, usually not in the exact form of the Rig-Veda, but taken out of their connection, and altered and adapted to new ends which were foreign to the mind of the original composers. There are also many new verses in the Yajur-Veda which are in the main ritualistic rather than hymnal, concerned with technical details of the sacrifice rather than with the praise of the gods.

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But the characteristic element of this Veda are the *yajus*, or formulas in prose, often more or less rhythmic prose. To these this Veda owes its name. They are, by the way, unquestionably the oldest prose on record in the literatures of the Indo-European peoples. These formulas are often brief and concise, mere dedications or swift prayers, accompanying an action, and sometimes hardly addressed to any one in particular. So, for instance, "Thee for Agni" (*agnaye tvā*), or "This to Agni" (*idam agneḥ*), indicate that an object is dedicated to the god Agni. Or, "Thee for strength" is the briefest prayer, or rather magically compelling wish, that the use of a certain article may give strength to the sacrificer. But they swell out from this brevity to long solemn litanies that betray at times such a measure of good sense as may at best be expected in these doings. Often, however, they are sunk in the deepest depths of imbecility, mere verbiage intent upon silly puns on the names of the things used at the sacrifice. When an animal victim is tied to the post the priest addresses the rope with the words, "Do not turn serpent, do not turn viper!"

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The Hindus have always had reason to fear serpents; they must have at times been stung by serpents whom they mistook for ropes, because the two things are often correlated in their literature. A Hindu figure of speech (or kenning) for serpent is "toothed rope."¹ For instance, a theosophic text of Upanishad character establishes the following comparison: "As a rope which is not clearly seen in the dark is mistaken for a serpent, so the unenlightened mistake the character of their own self."² That is to say, they do not comprehend the divine nature of their self. This is sensible, and there is sense also in the following: Kings are conceived as rulers of the earth. Therefore, at the ceremony of consecration the king looks down upon the earth, and prays: "O mother Earth, do not injure me, nor let me injure thee!" But often prayer passes over into litany, here as in other secondary stages of religious literature. The following is an all too typical case: "May life prosper through the sacrifice! May life's breath prosper through the sacrifice! May the eye prosper through the sacrifice! May the ear prosper through the sacrifice! May the back prosper through the sacrifice!’ And finally—O deepest bathos!—‘May the sacrifice prosper through the sacrifice!’”¹

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¹ See the author in *Hymns of the Atharva-Veda* (*Sacred Books of the East*, vol. xlii.), pp. 147, 368.

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² *Māndūkya-Kārikā*, 2. 17. *Cf.* the adage in *Petronius*, 45: *colubra restem non parit*, "a serpent does not beget a rope."

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¹ *Cf.* Winternitz, *Geschichte der Indischen Litteratur*, Part First, p. 155 *ff.*

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The many thousand formulas of this sort which occur in the Yajur-Veda and its accessory literature are now for the first time collected in my Vedic Concordance. I am sure that the enduring impression which they leave upon the mind, aside from their partial foolishness, is that of a formalism and mental decay upon the very brink of dissolution. The practices which accompany these formulas, though they contain much that is natural and vigorous, are also covered up by silly details of formalism, so that it is often difficult to discover their real human meaning. It is remarkable, however, that new life springs up on this arid waste. It is as though this phase of Hindu religion had prepared itself by its very excesses for a salutary and complacent hara-kiri. In its last outcome, in the very same Brahmanical schools where all this folly runs riot, spring up the Upanishads, those early theosophic treatises of India which pave the way for her enduring philosophies. The Upanishads in reality, though not professedly, sweep aside the ritual like cobwebs, and show the Hindu mind, not yet perfectly trained, but far from choked; and quite capable of carrying on the development of Hindu religions to the really great results which they eventually reach.

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The Sāma-Veda is of all the Vedas the least clear as regards its origin and purpose. As a literary production it is almost entirely secondary and negative. The Sāma-Veda is interesting chiefly, because it is the Veda of music. In addition it contains some original practices to which tradition has attached a number of legends unknown in the other Vedic schools. There are no connected hymns in this Veda, only more or less detached verses, borrowed in the main from the Rig-Veda. Even the sense of these verses is subordinated to the music to which they are set. The verses are grouped in strophes which, when accompanied by their music, are known as *sāmāni*, “melodies.” The *sāman*-stanzas are preserved in three forms. First, in the Rig-Veda, as ordinary poetry accented in the usual way, and not accompanied by melodies. They are contained mostly in the first fifty hymns of the first book, and in Books viii and ix. Most of these stanzas are composed in the metre *gāyatrī*, or in strophes known as *pragātha*, which are compounded of *gāyatrī* and *jagatī* verse-lines. Both the words *gāyatrī* and *pragātha* are derived from the verb *gai*, “sing,” and show that the stanzas and strophes composed in these metres were from the start intended to be sung.

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Secondly, they occur in the Sāma-Veda itself in a form called *ārcika*, that is, "collection of stanzas." This is a kind of libretto, or text-book containing the stanzas which are to be memorised for "making upon them," as the Hindus say, the *sāman*-melodies. Here also there is a system of accents, peculiar in its notation, but apparently still with reference to the unsung *sāmans*. In the third *sāman*-version, the Gānas¹ or song-books, we find the real *sāmans* as they are to be sung. Here not only the text but also the musical notes are given. Still this is not a complete *sāman* yet. In the middle of the sung stanzas certain phantastic exclamatory syllables are introduced, the so-called *stobhas*, such as *om*, *hau*, *hai*, *hoyi*, or *him*; and at the end of the stanzas certain concluding exclamations, the so-called *nidhanas*, such as *atha*, *ā*, *īm*, and *sāt*.² They remind us in a way of the Swiss and Tyrolese "yodels" which are introduced into the songs of these countries as a sort of cadenzas, intended to heighten the musical effect.

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¹ The word *gāna*, again, is derived from the root *gai*, "sing."

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² The Pancaviñça Brāhmaṇa relates that the poet Kanva was for a good while puzzled to find a *nidhana* for his *sāman*, until he heard a cat sneeze *ash*! Then he took *ash* for the *nidhana* of his *sāman*.

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The Sāma-Veda is devoted a good deal to the worship of Indra, a blustering, braggart god, who has to befuddle himself with *soma*, in order to get the necessary courage to slay demons. He, and he alone, has in the Rig-Veda the epithet *ṛcīshama*, that is, "he for whom the *sāmans* are composed upon the the *ṛks*," or, as we should say, "out of the *ṛks*."¹ It seems likely that the Sāma-Veda is built up out of remnants of savage Shamanism—the resemblance between the words Sāman and Shamanism, however, is accidental. Shamanism, as is well known, attempts to influence the natural order of events by shouts, beating of tam-tams, and frantic exhortation of the gods. The Brahmans were in the habit of blending their own priestly practices and conceptions with a good deal of rough material which they found current among the people. The *sāman* melodies, too, betray their popular origin in that they seem to have been sung originally at certain popular festivals, especially the solstitial festivals.² The exclamations interspersed among the words of the text are likely to be substitutes for the excited shouts of the Shaman priests of an earlier time. It is perhaps worth while to note that in later Vedic times the Sāma-Veda is held in small regard. The Brahmanical law-books prescribe that the recitation of Rig-Veda and Yajur-Veda must stop whenever the shout of *sāmans* is heard. One of these law-books, for instance, counts the barking of dogs, the bray of asses, the howling of wolves, and the sound of the *sāman* as noises so obnoxious or defiling that, when heard, the study of the other Vedas must stop.¹

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¹ See my articles, *On Ṛcīshama, an Epithet of Indra*, in *Journal of the American Oriental Society*, vol. xxi., p. 50 *ff.*; and, *The God Indra and the Sāma-Veda*, in *Vienna Oriental Journal*, vol. xvii., p. 156 *ff.*

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² See A. Hillebrandt, *Die Sonnenwendfeste in Alt-Indien, Festschrift für Konrad Hoffmann*, (Erlangen 1889), pp. 22. *ff* and 34 *ff.* of the reprint.

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¹ Compare on this point Professor Ludwig's remark in *Der Rig-Veda*, vol. v., p. 8.

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The interest of the Sāma-Veda for the history of Hindu religion and literature amounts to very little. It represents in fact little more than the secondary employment in the service of religion of popular music and other quasi-musical noises. These were developed and refined in the course of civilisation, and worked into the formal ritual of Brahmanism in order to add an element of beauty and emotion. In more modern times the *sāman*-chants at the sacrifice are said to be quite impressive.²

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² See the author in the *Vienna Oriental Journal*, vol. xvii., p. 162.

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The oldest name of the Atharva-Veda is *atharvāngirasaḥ*, a compound formed of the names of two semi-mythic families of priests, the Atharvans and Angirases. At a very early time the former term was regarded as synonymous with "holy charms," or "blessings"; the latter with "witchcraft charms," or "curses." In addition to this name, and the later more conventional name Atharva-Veda, there are two other names, used only in the ritual texts of this Veda. One is *bhṛgvaṅgirasah*, that is, Bhrigus and Angirases. In this the Bhrigus, another ancient family of fire priests, take the place of the Atharvans. The other is Brahma-Veda, probably "Veda of the Brahman," that is the Veda of the supervising fourth priest at the Vedic (*çrauta*) sacrifices.¹ The latter name may, however, be due to some extent to the fact for the cure of diseases; prayers for health and long life; charms for the prosperity of home and children, cattle and fields; expiatory formulas designed to free from sin and guilt; charms to produce harmony in the life of families and in the deliberations of the village assembly; charms concerned with love and marriage, and, indirectly, with the rivalries and jealousies of men and women in love; conjurations against demons, sorcerers, and enemies; charms for kings in peace and war; and charms calculated to promote the interests of the Brahmans, especially to secure for them the abundant baksheesh for which they clamor with the most refreshing directness.

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The Atharva-Veda is of unrivalled importance for the history of superstition, of folk-lore, and popular practices. Related in character are the so-called "House-books" (Gṛhya-Sūtras). These were composed as formal treatises at a comparatively late Vedic period, yet they report practices and prayers of great antiquity. The Hindus, then as now, took an intensely religious view of their lives. In its even daily course, as well as in its crucial moments, such as birth, investiture, disciplehood, marriage, and death, the life of the Hindu was both sanctified and enlivened by a continuous chain of religious formalities, acts, and festivals. These were codified in the "House-books" with nice minuteness. The Atharva-Veda and the "House-books" together lay bare with unrivalled precision of detail the religion of the obscure and the humble. For many a Hindu, through many centuries, these fond time-honored customs of the fathers, the *schöne sitte*, was the true religion, which turned inward, irradiating and sustaining the spirit of a people whose masses live the life of dark toil and do not see the light revealed to their own elect. To the development of the higher and ultimate religion of the Veda these homely practices and superstitions contribute very little.

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*Charm against Jaundice.*

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1. Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy jaundice: in the colour of the red bull do we envelop thee!
2. We envelop thee in red tints, unto long life. May this person go unscathed, and be free of yellow colour!
3. The cows whose divinity is Rohinī, they who, moreover, are themselves red [*rohiṇīs*]—in their every form and every strength we do envelop thee.
4. Into the parrots, into the *ropaṇākās* (thrush) do we put thy jaundice; into the *hāridravas* (yellow wagtail) do we put thy yellowness.

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(*Atharva-Veda*, i. 22.)¹

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¹ See the author, *Hymns of the Atharva-Veda* (*Sacred Books of the East*, vol. xlii.) p. 7. For the very interesting symbolic practices that accompany the recital of this charm against jaundice, see p. 263 *ff.* of the same work.

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*A Woman's Incantation against her Rival.*

1. I have taken unto myself her fortune and her glory, as a wreath off a tree. As a broad-based mountain may she sit a long time with her parents !
2. This woman shall be subjected to thee as thy bride, O King Yama (Pluto) : till then let her be fixed to the house of her mother, or her brother, or her father !
3. This woman shall be the keeper of thy house, O King Yama : her do we deliver over to thee ! May she long sit with her parents, until her hair drops from her head !
4. With the incantation of Asita, of Kaçyapa, and of Gaya do I cover up thy fortune, as women cover things within a chest.
(*Atharva-Veda*, i. 14.)¹

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¹ See the same work, pp. 107 and 252 .ff

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The poetic stanzas of all sorts, and the ritualistic prose formulas of the Veda collectively go by the name of *mantra*, "pious utterance" or "hymn." In the texts of one group of Yajur-Vedas, the so-called Black Yajur-Vedas,² these stanzas and prose formulas alternate with descriptive prose chapters which tell how these *mantras* are to be used at the sacrifice, and why they are to be used in a given way. The passages are designated as *brāhmana*. In the case of the so-called White Yajur-Vedas and also all the other Vedas the Brāhmanas are compiled into separate works whose object, again, is to expound the combination of prayer and ritual at the sacrifice. The meaning of the word *brāhmaṇa* is not altogether clear. Either it means "holy practice," or "religious performance" in distinction from *mantra*, "holy utterance," or "religious text." Or, perhaps rather it means the theological explanation by Brahman priests of the religious ritual as a whole, including both prayer and performance. As regards both contents and literary quality, the Brāhmanas are closely analogous to the Hebrew Talmud. In the main they are bulky prose statements of the details of the great Vedic sacrifices, and their theological meaning. Both the performances and their explanation are treated in such a way, and spun out to such length, as to render these works on the whole monuments of tediousness and intrinsic stupidity. And yet the Brāhmanas compel the student of Hinduism that comes to scoff to stay to pray. In the first place they are important because they are written in connected prose—the earliest narrative prose in the entire field of Indo-European speech, only little less archaic than the prose formulas of the Yajur-Veda.¹ They are especially important for syntax: in this respect they represent the old Hindu speech far better than the Rig-Veda, whose syntax and style are distracted by the licenses and restrictions that go with poetic form. Secondly, the Brāhmanas are an almost inexhaustible mine for the history of the sacrifice, religious practices, and the institutions of priesthood. These institutions in time became so systematic and formidable as to make the names Brahman and Brahmanism typical everywhere for priest and priesthood. Thirdly, the Brāhmana texts not only describe and expound the sacrifice, but they illustrate and enliven it by numerous stories and legends. While engaged in expounding the technicalities of the ritual, they at the same time unconsciously supplement the poetic Vedas. The Hebrew Talmud interrupts the hair-splitting, logic-chopping expositions of its ritual Hallacha, by picking from time to time rare flowers from the garden of its Haggada, or legendary lore. The Brāhmanas no less make drafts upon the past and present of the great storehouse of myths and stories that India has cherished from the beginning of her time. The poetic value of many of these stories may be judged from the fact that they remain stock themes for the Hindu poets of later times.

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² For the distinction between Black and White Yajur-Veda see Macdonell, *History of Sanskrit Literature*, p. 177.

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¹ See above, p. 33.

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Here we find, first of all, the story of the flood, wonderfully analogous to the flood legends of all Western Asia, and especially the account of the book of Genesis.¹ Many echoes are called up by the story of Cyavana the Bhārgava who, old and decrepit as a ghost, is pelted with clods by the children of the neighborhood. Then he punishes their families by creating discord, so that "father fought with son, and brother with brother." Cyavana finally, through the help of the divine physicians, the Açvins, enters the fountain of youth (*queckbronn*) and marries the lovely Sukanyā.² Like an oasis in the desert comes the ancient tale of Purūravas and Urvaçī, whose mythic meaning has been much disputed or altogether denied.³ Already the Rig-Veda knows the story, and the Hindu master-poet Kālidāsa, perhaps a thousand years later, derives from it one of his loveliest dramas. It is a story which contains the same *motif* as the Undine, Melusine, and Lohengrin stories. A heavenly nymph (Apsaras), Urvaçī by name, loves and marries King Purūravas, but she abandons him again because he violates one of the conditions of this intrinsically ill-assorted union. Not, however, through his own fault, but on account of a trick played him by the Gandharvas, a kind of heavenly "sports," the natural mates of the heavenly nymphs, the Apsarases. He must not be seen in a state of nudity by his wife. But on a certain occasion the Gandharvas cause lightning to play: she sees him and vanishes. Then Purūravas roams wailing through the land of the Kurus, until he comes to a lotus pond in which nymphs in the form of swans disport themselves. One of them is Urvaçī. They engage in a poetic dialogue which is preserved without the rest of the story as one of the hymns of the Rig-Veda (10. 95). This finally relieves the intolerable situation. The Brāhmana story tells:

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¹ See Eggeling's translation of the version of this legend in the Çatapatha Brāhmana, *Sacred Books of the East*, vol. xii., p. 216 *ff.* For the story of the flood in general see Usener, *Die Sintflutsagen* (Bonn, 1899); Andree, *Die Flutsagen* (Brunswick, 1891); and Winternitz in *Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien*, vol. xxxi (1901), p. 305.

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² Çatapatha Brāhmana 4. 1. 5. 1 *ff.*

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³ See, last, the author in *Journal of the American Oriental Society*, vol. xx., p. 180.

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"Then she was sorry for him in her heart. And she spake: 'A year from to-day thou shalt come; then thou mayest tarry with me one night. Till then thy son whom I am bearing shall have been born.' And that night a year he returned. Behold there was a golden palace. Then they said to him, 'Enter here.' Then they sent Urvaçī to him. And she spake: 'To-morrow the Gandharvas will grant thee a wish; choose one.' He said, 'Choose thou for me.' She advises him to say, 'I desire to become one of you.' The next morning the Gandharvas grant him a wish. And he says, 'I wish to become one of you.'"

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Then the Gandharvas teach him a particular fire-offering, by means of which a mortal may become a Gandharva; thus he becomes a fitting mate for Urvaçī. Now the reason why this story is preserved is that the Brāhmaṇa text is engaged in describing this very fire-offering; the story proves the magic of this sacrifice which is, aye, powerful enough to turn a mortal into a demi-god.

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Here are a couple of short legends, crisp and clear-cut as cameos. They show that, just as the early gods of India are nature-gods, so the early legends are engrossed with problems of nature and the world. The first of these snatches¹ may be entitled

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¹ Maitrāyaṇī Saṁhitā 1. 5. 12.

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A Legend of the First Pair.

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“Yama and Yamī (‘the twins’) are the first man and woman. Yama died. The gods sought to console Yamī for the death of Yama. When they asked her she said, ‘To-day he hath died.’ They said: ‘In this way she will never forget him. Let us create night!’ Day only at that time existed, not night. The gods created night. Then morrow came into being. Then she forgot him. Hence, they say, ‘Days and nights make men forget sorrow.’”

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The second legend² may be entitled

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² Maitrāyaṇī Saṁhitā 1. 10. 13. *cf.* Pischel, *Vedische Studien*, i., 174 *ff.*

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The Mountains as Winged Birds.

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“The mountains are the eldest children of Prajāpati (the Creator). They were winged (birds). They kept flying forth and settling wherever they liked. At that

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time this earth was unstable. (God) Indra cut off their wings. By means of the mountains he made firm the earth. The wings became clouds. Therefore these clouds ever hover about the mountains. For this is their place of origin."

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At the end of the Brāhmaṇas appears a class of texts known as Āraṇyakas, or "Forest Treatises." The meaning of this name is not altogether clear. It seems probable that these works were recited by hermits living in the forest, or, more precisely, those who went to the forest to live, at the time when they entered the third stage of Hindu life, preparatory to final emancipation.¹ According to another, less likely, view they are texts which were taught by teacher to pupil in the solitude of the forest, rather than in the profaner surroundings of the town or village: this because the quiet of the forest harmonised better with the sanctity of their contents. In either view it is difficult to see why so much ado should have been made about them. The Āraṇyakas are later than the Brāhmaṇas; this follows from the position they occupy at the end of these texts, and from their contents. On top of descriptions of sacrificial ceremonies we have here symbolism of the sacrifice and priestly philosophy of the most fantastic order. The real ritual performance seems for the most part to be supplanted by allegorical disquisition. But the themes of the Āranyakas are by no means of one sort only; on the contrary they are heterogeneous and haphazard. Thus the Taittirīya Āranyaka deals in its first book with the Ārunaketuka Agni, a particular method of building the fire-altar; its second book makes the rather astounding leap over to Brahmanical education and Veda study; its third, fourth, and fifth books deal with parts of the Vedic sacrificial ceremonial; and its sixth book describes the old Vedic funeral ceremonies (*piṭṛmedha*). Still more variegated are the contents of the Aitareya Āranyaka. What governs the choice of these "forest themes" escapes our notice almost altogether. In any case these books are of lesser importance from the point of view of Vedic literature and religion, except for the following fact, which is of paramount importance:

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¹ See below, p. 288.

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The Āranyakas are symptomatic and transitional. The important symptom, if we understand the matter aright, is the subordination of the mere act of the sacrifice to its allegorical, or, as we might say, spiritual meaning. This suppression of the material side of the ritual bridges over to the last class of texts which the Veda has to offer along this line of evolution. They are the famous Upanishads, the early philosophical or theosophical texts of India, which have become fateful for all subsequent higher Hindu thought. In these the ritual together with every other manifestation of the religion of works is negated, sometimes by cautious and delicate innuendo, always by the inherent antagonism of the Upanishad themes. The older Upanishads are for the most part either imbedded in the Āraṇyakas or, more frequently, attached to the end of these texts. From very early times, therefore, they have the name Vedānta, "End of the Veda."¹ End of the Veda they are, as regards their position in the redactions of the long line of the so-called revealed (*çrauta*) texts, and as regards the time of their composition. But they are the end of the Veda in a higher sense as well. They are the texts of the Veda's highest religion and philosophy. In particular that system of Brahmanical philosophy which controls at the present time nearly all the higher thought of Brahmanical India bears the name Vedānta. And there is no important form of Hindu thought, heterodox Buddhism included, which is not rooted in the Upanishads.

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¹ Çvetāçvatara Upanishad 6. 22; Muṇḍaka Upanishad 3. 2. 6.

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The philosophic and religious quality of the Upanishads will occupy a good deal of our attention when we come to the higher religion of the Veda in the fifth and sixth lectures of this course. For the present we may content ourselves with some facts in the literary history of these extraordinary compositions. As regards their date we can say at least this much, that the older Upanishads antedate Buddha and Buddhism. The production of after-born Upanishads continued, however, many centuries after Buddhism, into very modern times. Next to the Rig-Veda the Upanishads are decidedly the most important literary document of early India. For the history of religion they are even more important.

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In the year 1656 the Mogul (Mussalman) Prince Mohammed Dārā Shukoh invited several Hindu Pandits from Benares to Delhi, and induced them to translate the Upanishads into Persian. Dārā Shukoh was the oldest son of that Mogul Emperor Shah Jehān, who built at Agra, as a mausoleum for his favourite Sultana, the Taj Mahal, perhaps the most beautiful edifice on earth. He was afterwards deposed from the throne by another son of his, the bloody and powerful Emperor Aurengzeb. Dārā Shukoh was a man of another sort. He was the spiritual follower of the famous liberal Emperor Akbar, and wrote a book intended to reconcile the religious doctrines of the Hindus and Mohammedans. Hence his extraordinary desire to spread the knowledge of infidel writings. Three years after the accomplishment of the Upanishad translation he was put to death (1659) by his brother Aurengzeb, on the ground that he was an infidel, dangerous to the established religion of the empire; as a matter of fact, because he was the legitimate successor to the throne of Shah Jehān.¹ India, in more than one respect the land of origins, is also the country from which came the first suggestions of a comparative study of religions. The Buddhist Emperor Açoka, 250 years before Christ, had the spirit of perfect religious freedom. Emperor Akbar, Prince Dārā Shukoh, and Rāja Rammohun Roy are another trifolium of this sort. The last-named enlightened prince wrote in 1824 a book entitled *Against the Idolatry of all Religions*; told the Hindus that caste divisions "are as destructive of national union as of social enjoyment"; expressed belief in the divine authority of Christ; and yet confidently did regard the Upanishads as the true source of the higher religious life of the Hindus. This class of men are the advance guard of the modern scholars who study gentile religions in a spirit of sympathy and fairness.

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¹ See Elphinstone, *History of India* (edited by Cowell), p. 610; Max Müller, *Sacred Books of the East*, vol. i., p. cvii.

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I would ask you to remember in this connection my friend, the late Professor Max Müller, one of the translators of the Upanishads—Mokshamūlara, as the Hindus called him during his latter days. It happens that *moksha* is the Sanskrit word for "salvation," and *mūla* means "root." To the Hindus his name means "Root-of-salvation," or, as we might say, with a different turn, "Salvation Müller." I do not imagine that Müller believed in the Hindu salvation, which is release from the chain of lives and deaths in the course of transmigration. But if freedom of mind partakes of the flavor of salvation, "Salvation Müller" he was. Max Müller's eminence as a scholar and writer is well known to you; less generally well understood, perhaps, is the liberalising quality of his thought, which he exercised untiringly during more than half a century. Among Europeans he was pre-eminent for the spirit of sympathy and fairness which he brought to the study and criticism of Hindu religious thought.

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The Persian pronunciation of the word Upanishad is Oupnekhat. It happened that the Frenchman Anquetil du Perron, the famous pioneer in the study of the Zoroastrian religion of the Parsis, was living in India in 1775. There he became interested in the Persian Oupnekhat, and later on made a Latin translation of Dārā Shukho's version. This was published in Strassburg in two volumes (vol. i. in 1801; vol. ii. in 1802). This translation proved eventful in the West. At that comparatively recent time the Upanishads were yet unknown in Europe. Notwithstanding its double disguise, first the Persian, and next the Latin, Anquetil's Latin rendering proved to be the medium through which Schopenhauer became acquainted with the thought of the Upanishads. As is well known, Schopenhauer, who is the father of Western pessimism, was powerfully impregnated with their pantheistic, or, more precisely, monistic philosophy. His own system is really based upon conceptions that coincide in one way or another with the more detached teachings of the Upanishads. Schopenhauer used to have the Oupnekhat lie open upon his table, and was in the habit, before going to bed, of performing his devotions from its pages. His own estimate of the character of the Oupnekhat is preserved to us in the following statement: "Next to the original it is the most rewardful reading possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life; it will be the solace of my death." Schopenhauer himself tells us the reason for his faith in the Upanishads. The fundamental thought of the Upanishads, he says, is what has at all times called forth the scoffing of fools and the unceasing meditation of the wise, namely, the doctrine of unity; the doctrine that all plurality is only apparent; that in all individuals of this world, in whatsoever endless number they present themselves, one after another, and one beside another, there is manifested one and the same true being. Therefore the Upanishads are in his eyes the fruit of the profoundest insight that the world has ever seen; almost superhuman thought, whose authors can scarcely be imagined to have been mere men.

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