The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c7.7

c7.7

as we may translate the German doggerel.¹ Unless, still less likely, Vedic poetry was the child of the muse of some Rāja’s poet laureate, “given to infinite tobacco,” eager, as he took the air under one of those huge banyan-trees large enough to hold a village, to bag some good subject for the delectation of the court of his patron. Delightful as might be some such romantic a view to the student of a literature that requires the devotion of a lifetime, it is not the correct view. My own fancy in the earlier days moved along these lines. I am not sure but what some such conception of Vedic literature, faulty as I now believe it to be, drew me into these studies more enticingly than could have the soberer view of ripening years.