The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c7.3

c7.3

THE religion which is contained in the bulk of the so-called "revealed" (*çrauta*) Vedic literature, that is in the main body of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sāma-Veda, and the Brāhmanas, is a hieratic or priestly religion. As regards its mechanism, or its external practices, it is unmistakably liturgic or ritualistic. As regards its immediate purpose, or its economic aspect, it is thoroughly utilitarian and practical. Its purpose is to secure happiness and success, health and long life for man, notably the rich man, while living upon the earth; to secure to a very talented and thrifty class of priest-poets abundant rewards in return for their services in procuring for men this happiness, success, and so on; to satisfy the divine powers, visible and invisible, beneficent and noxious, gods and demons, that is, to establish livable relations between gods and men; and, finally, to secure after death the right to share the paradise of the gods in the company of the pious fathers that have gone there before.