The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1.16

c6.s1.16

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.