The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1.52

c6.s1.52

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.