The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c7.9

c7.9

I shall endeavor later on to attach the right value to the poetry of the Vedic hymns in the abstract. I shall also show the way in which these poems express a high quality of religious feeling on the part of their composers—Rishis, as they are called in the texts themselves. My endeavor shall not be to minimise the quality of these compositions, but rather to show that they contain the rudiments of a far higher species of thought than these early poets could have dreamt of; thought which in its way, and along its particular avenue, has become final for all time in India, and even outside of India. At present we are engaged with the more external character of the Rig-Veda—its epidermis, as we might say. The Rig-Veda collection served purely utilitarian purposes. It is in fact a prayer-book whose explanation ought not to be undertaken without reference to definite occasions and definite practices. The main body of the books of the Rig-Veda, the so-called family books,¹ represents in all probability the prayers of different priestly families on the same or similar occasions, or in connection with the same or similar sacrifices. The Vedic hymns are not quite described even if we designate them as sacrificial poetry. It is a little more than that: I cannot express it better than by saying, it is the sacrifice—to the gods of course—treated poetically. In other words these poems are incidental to the sacrifice. The Vedic poet rises in the early morning to a sacrificial day. The very first natural phenomenon he sees with his own eyes, the glorious maiden Dawn, is at once pressed into service. She trumpets forth, so to say, to the world that this is going to be a day of sacrifice which shall result in wealth and comforts. The day goes on, being a mere scaffolding, or ladder upon whose rungs are placed offerings to the gods. Morning, noon, and evening, tolerably definite gods get their regular allowance of offerings, and a very admirable kind of hymnal praise, namely the hymns of the Rig-Veda. As the gods come on, one after another, or in pairs, or in groups, they enter upon a stage. The stage is the sacrificial day. They are figures in a drama, more important collectively than singly. Take them singly, and I venture to say that even the Rig-Veda, as does the later ritual, begins to show most of them in the state of a sort of supernumeraries on the stage of the sacrifice. India is nothing if not singular. We must not shrink from realising that the earliest Hindu poetry is not epic, nor lyric in the ordinary sense, not idyllic, nor didactic, but that it is almost throughout dominated by a single idea, namely, the praise of the gods in connection with the sacrifice. The sacrifice is the dominant note of Vedic life, as far as it is revealed in these ancient documents. The chief acts of the people living this life, in so far as it is revealed by the literature are sacrificial; their chief thought the praise and conciliation of their gods at the sacrifice. The *soma*, the sacred drink, intoxicates the gods into heroism, or the rich melted butter, or ghee (*ghṛta*), that is poured into the willing fire, fattens them into contentment. Especially the *soma* is ever present, in express statement or by implication. So much so that in a technical sense at least the Rig-Veda religion may be designated as a religion of *soma*-practices.