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An Outline of the Religious Literature of India c6: Chapter I. The Early Vedic Religion: x to y.

An Outline of the Religious Literature of India c6

Language
English

Contents

Chapter I. The Early Vedic Religion: x to y.

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§ 1. The investigations of the past century have shown clearly that the people who conquered India and created the Hindu religion and civilization belonged to that ancient race, now usually called Indo-European, from which sprang the Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic, Italic, Hellenic, Armenian, Persian, and other peoples. This kinship is visible in the speech of the invaders,¹ in numerous details of their culture,² and also in their religion.³ From a comparison of the beliefs and practices of these many nations it is possible to form some idea of the religion of the parent Indo-European race. The basis of the religion was an animistic belief in a very large number of petty gods, each of which had a special function; but the people had already advanced to the conception of a few glorious heavenly gods (Sanskrit *deva*, Latin *deus*, &c.), each a representative of one of the greater aspects of nature. Sky, thunder, sun, moon, fire, wind, and water were the chief of this new group of great gods. They were worshipped with sacrifice, accompanied with potent formulae and prayer, the offerings being either laid out on grass for the gods to eat or wafted to them on the fire and smoke of the altar. Ancestors were also worshipped as powerful beings who from the other world watched over their descendants. There was thus already some sort of belief in immortality. Magic was highly regarded and much used. The family was patriarchal in character; marriage was universal; and sons were ardently desired.

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¹ Max Müller, *Lectures on the Science of Language*.

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² Max Müller, *Biographies of Words*.

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³ Schrader, art. ‘Aryan Religion’, *ERE.*; Hillebrandt, *RL.* 1-10; Bloomfield, *RV.* 99-149.

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§ 2. We cannot tell where the home of this ancient race was, nor at what times and places the great historical peoples hived off from it; but we can trace with certainty the invaders of India, in that stage of their life which immediately preceded the invasion.¹ A people, partly nomadic, partly agricultural, lived for a considerable time somewhere in Central Asia, perhaps just to the north of the Hindu Kush. Finally they separated into two groups, perhaps by a process of migration so slow as to leave them unconscious that they had fallen apart, the one moving through Afghanistan into India, the other spreading over the wide territory which bears their racial name, Iran. This word is simply a variant form of Aryan, the name used by their brothers, the invaders of India. We may therefore speak of the period before the separation as the time of Indo-Iranian unity.

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¹ See Keith on *The Early History of the Indo-Iranians*, Bhandarkar C.V., 81.

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There is sufficient evidence available to enable us to form a clearer picture of this period than of the far earlier Indo-European period. Most of our knowledge arises from a comparison of the Veda, the earliest Indian literature, with the earliest literature of the Iranian peoples, viz. the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia. A careful comparative study of the two reveals the fact that the Indo-Iranian people had advanced beyond the early Indo-European faith. The religion centres in the heavenly gods and the animistic divinities are far less prominent. There can be little doubt that among the gods reverenced were Varuṇa, Mitra, Soma, Aryaman, Indra, the Aśvins (i. e. the Dioskouroi), and two semi-divine figures, Vivasvant and Yama. All occur in both literatures except Varuṇa, Indra, and the Aśvins. These are not definitely vouched for by the Avesta,² but they are named in an inscription found by Winckler at Boghaz Keui in Asia Minor and believed to date from 1400 B.C.;¹ and there are so many points of resemblance between Ahura Mazda, the God of Zoroaster, and the Varuṇa of the *Rigveda* that one is almost driven to believe the two to be identical in origin.² There were three forms of sacrifice in use among the early people, the shedding of oblations of grain and milk on the sacred fire, the setting forth of basins of an intoxicating beverage (Sansk. *soma*, Avestan, *haoma*) for the gods to drink, and the sacrifice of animals. Soma had already been deified, and the priests had begun to sing hymns as an accompaniment to the ritual with which it was offered. The presence in the *Avesta* of a considerable number of ritual terms and designations of priests, which are exact equivalents of technical words and phrases found in the Vedas,³ proves that the basis of the liturgy and the ritual of the Vedic and the Zoroastrian religions had already taken shape. One most remarkable conception, the idea of law physical and moral as a fixed divine order, was formed at a very early date. It is already found in Persian proper names at a very early date, possibly 1600 B.C., in the form *arta*, and it appears in the *Rigveda* as *ṛita*, and in the *Avesta* in the form *asha*.

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² Yet Indra and Nāsatya (i. e. the Aśvins) occur as demons in the mythology of the Avesta.

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¹ It mentions Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, Nāsatya (i. e. the Aśvins) as gods. Thus the high antiquity of Varuṇa is assured.

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² Moulton, *EZ.* 61; Bloomfield, *RV.* 132 ff.

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³ Hillebrandt, *RL.* 11; Haug, AB. I. 61.

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The time when the people fell into two parts is unknown. Some scholars would give it an extremely early date, while others assign it to the middle of the second millenium B.C.

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§ 3. Hindus wrote no formal history at any period; for the early centuries there are no archaeological remains that throw any light on the course of events; nor is any definite information provided by nations outside India; so that the religious and epic literature forms the only sources of information available. Yet, though it is impossible to write the history, it is possible to learn much about the religion of that early time from these ancient books.

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In this chapter we deal with the development of the religion from the moment when the tribes entered India down to the time when the doctrine of transmigration and karma arose, and we divide the whole period into three sections, in order to exhibit more clearly the growth of ideas and institutions.

i. Rik, I-IX.

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§ 4. The *Rigveda*, the earliest literature of India, is a large collection of hymns connected in various ways with the sacrifices, the domestic ceremonies, and the religious speculation of the time. These hymns were composed by the invading Aryan tribes, at last severed from their brothers who were destined to produce Zoroaster and make Persia famous. When the earliest hymns were composed, they were settled in the territories forming the basin of the upper Indus and its tributaries; but thereafter they gradually spread farther east.

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But the invading Aryans, tall in stature and of fair complexion, did not form the main population. Scattered about among them and around them and over the plains of North India were innumerable tribes of short, dark people with whom they were frequently at war, and whom they called Dasyus and Dāsas. The hymns of the *Rigveda* give no indication that the Aryan tribes thought of themselves as being strangers in India or as being in any way related with another people away to the west. They seem to regard themselves as belonging to the soil on which they live. On the other hand, they are certainly very conscious of the differences between themselves and the Dāsas, and they regard their hostility towards them as not only natural but inevitable. These two races represent the chief elements in the ethnology of India to this day, and from them and the mutual influence they have exercised on each other have come, in the main, the civilization and the religion of India. In the study of the evolution of the religion of India we shall constantly be tempted to give our undivided attention to the Aryan race and community;

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but to neglect the large part played throughout the history by the aborigines is to fail to grasp facts of great significance.

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§ 5. In the following sentences we combine the few fragments of information given in the hymns about the dark tribes. They are said to have a black skin, and the difference in colour (*varṇa*) between them and the fair Aryans is frequently referred to. They are called *anās*, which probably means ‘noseless’, i.e. snub-nosed. They were arranged in clans; they had considerable wealth; and they built forts for themselves, frequently on hills; but there is no reason to think that in civilization they were at all comparable with the Aryans. The differences between them and the Aryans on which the hymns lay most stress are religious. The following epithets are applied to them: ‘not sacrificing’, ‘devoid of rites’, ‘addicted to strange vows’, ‘god-hating’, ‘without devotion’; and they are probably the people referred to as *śiśna-devāḥ*, ‘those whose god is a phallus’. As many of these people were captured by the Aryans in war and reduced to slavery, the word *dāsa* came to bear the meaning of ‘slave’.

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§ 6. The picture which the hymns enable us to form of the Aryans shows us an early but not a primitive people; for they had made considerable progress in material civilization. Yet they were still a simple race; for they had neither coinage nor writing, and had little idea of number or measure. Their trade existed only as barter, the cow being the unit of exchange. They lived in wooden houses and built small forts on hills, to which they retired when hard pressed in war.

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There was no caste among the Aryan tribes at this time. We certainly find a triple division of the people—warriors, priests, and commons; but there was no hard-and-fast law prohibiting intermarriage and commanding each son to follow his father’s occupation. Yet the aristocratic warriors and priests stood out very distinctly from the common people, and it is only of the aristocracy that we have anything like adequate information. Though in race, religion, and language the Aryan tribes were one, they had not reached the idea of forming themselves into a nation; nor had they a sovereign or a war-leader. Each tribe was independent and had its chief, who presided over his people in peace and led them in war. War led occasionally to a coalition of tribes.

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Their literature shows that this people had a striking genius for language. Alone among all the languages of Indo-European speech their tongue, with the cultured literary language known as Sanskrit which grew out of it, retains each element in easily recognizable form. It has thus proved of very signal service to the science of philology.

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§ 7. The *Rigveda*, which is not only the first monument of the Indian genius but the earliest literature produced within the Indo-European family of peoples, is a collection of 1,017 hymns (with eleven extra uncanonical pieces) distributed in ten books. Perhaps we shall find our way into the significance of the collection most readily if we attempt to sketch the way in which it seems to have come into existence.

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We have seen above that, already in the Indo-Iranian period, the exhilarating drink made from the soma-plant had been deified, that a special ritual in which this divine drink was offered to the gods was in use, and that the singing of a hymn was an integral part of the ritual. This is the historical tap-root of the *Rigveda*. The invaders of India carried these customs with them, and continued the composition of hymns for the Soma-ritual in their new country. Since the hymn was sung, the priest who sang the hymn was called the Singer, *Udgātṛi*. But poetry and the hymn would not be restricted to a single use. Hence a custom arose, probably after the Aryans had entered India, that the leading priest, the Sacrificer, *Hotṛi*, who was responsible for offerings made in the fire and for animal-sacrifice, should recite, in honour of the god he was worshipping, a poem or hymn of praise, *Rich*. Then, as the ritual increased in detail, an assistant was appointed to undertake the manual acts of sacrificing (*adhvara*). He was therefore called *Adhvaryu*, and the recitation of praises became the Hotṛ's chief duty.¹ Although the ritual was now divided into three strands, there were no distinct orders of priests corresponding to these divisions. Each officiant was merely called Hotṛ, Udgātṛ, or Adhvaryu, for the time being, according to the duty he undertook at the sacrifice.²

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¹ Haug, *AB.* I. 17.

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² Muir, *OST.* V. 350, with a reference to a passage in Yāska; Hillebrandt, *RL.* 13.

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§ 8. Men believed that the sacrifices were mighty to influence the gods and bring down gifts from them. Therefore every chieftain and noble among the Aryans was eager to secure the help of a skilled priest, and was glad to pay him handsomely for services which brought victory and wealth from the gods. Hence we find existing among the people a number of priestly families of high standing and influence. The priest taught his sons the precious secret lore which enabled him by conducting sacrifices in the right way to win the favour of the gods for his patrons. It was in these priestly families that the composition of hymns to the gods was practised. Each priest did his utmost to produce as beautiful a hymn as possible, in order to please and move the divinity for whom the sacrifice was held. Then the priest taught his sons the best hymns he had composed; so that in each family there arose a body of hymns which were greatly treasured, and were orally transmitted from father to son, along with the directions for the work of the altar.

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Naturally, the priestly families competed for the patronage of the greatest chieftains and the wealthiest nobles, and in the struggle found the quality of their hymns a matter of vital importance. We must therefore picture to ourselves a time of eager poetic emulation, during which metres, stanzas, and refrains were gradually perfected and polished. A very dignified and expressive literary dialect was thus gradually evolved. This dialect is closely related, it is true, to the common vernacular, yet it employs stately words and phrases which would rise to the lips only in moments of exaltation, and here and there uses well-known and effective archaisms. Thus there arose the first literary dialect of India. As time went on, the influence of the priests tended to increase. The ritual became steadily more complex, and the need of skilled sacerdotal help more pressing. Naturally, hymns were written for the various festivals, anniversaries, and sacrifices. The literature thus tended to become more artificial. The hymn prepared for a special sacrifice, and written so as to fit into its chief incidents or features, would be more appropriate, but probably less inspired than a hymn arising from a spontaneous outburst of religious feeling.

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How the father taught his sons the family heritage of technical lore and hymns we do not know. Each experienced priest probably conducted a sort of rudimentary school for the benefit of his sons and nephews, in which he taught them orally all the hymns and priestly lore traditional in the family.¹

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¹ See *RV.* VII. 103.

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§ 9. The *Ṛigveda*² preserves seven groups of hymns which belonged to as many families. Each of these bears the name of a patriarch,³ and to him in each case most of the hymns in the family collection are ascribed. As authors of hymns these patriarchs are called *Ṛishis*, seers. The names of the eponym *Ṛishis* of the seven families are: Gṛitsamada, Viśvāmitra, Vāmadeva, Atri, Bharadvāja, Vasiṣṭha, Kaṇva. There were other families which possessed hymns, but, clearly, these seven were the most famous of all. It seems certain that these family collections grew up gradually and that many singers contributed to each collection; for each family was as it were a distinct school of poetry.

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² For the growth of the *Rik* see Macdonell, 40 ff.

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³ That is, is spoken of as the Atri book, the Vasiṣṭha book, &c., because the name in each case occurs in many of the hymns of the book as the name of the seer or of the family of which he is the spokesman.

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But a moment came when, by some means or other, the hymn-collections belonging to the six families named first above were all taught together in a single school. Each collection was still kept distinct; but the collections were taught in order, the one after the other, to the same pupils, instead of being each retained and handed down in a single family. There was thus formed the body of poetry now contained in Books II–VII of the *Rigveda*. How this unification was effected we do not know. The emergence of a very powerful chieftain, determined at all costs to have the whole of the best poetry at the command of his own chief priest, would account for it; and as the Brahmanic culture first took definite shape in the holy land of Kurukshetra, the land of the Kurus, the modern Sirhind, one is tempted to think that it was some vigorous Kuru prince who commanded that the hymns of the six families should all be taught together; but there is no distinct evidence.

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When brought together in the school, the six collections seem to have been taught in ascending order, each succeeding collection containing more hymns than its predecessor: but later interpolations, by increasing the number of the hymns irregularly, have somewhat disturbed the arrangement. The hymns in each of the six collections are in the main arranged according to a common method. They are distributed in groups according to the gods they are addressed to, and within each of these groups they are arranged in descending order according to the number of stanzas each contains.

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§ 10. Later, a large number of hymns disposed in nine groups was introduced into the school. Each group was believed to be the work of one poet¹ or family, all the nine being quite distinct from the six already mentioned. These hymns were given the first place in the whole body of literature belonging to the school, being taught before the six original collections. They now form the latter half of Book I of the *Rigveda*, beginning with the fifty-first hymn. The whole collection now amounted to Ib + II–VII.

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¹ The names are Savya, Nodhas, Parāśara, Gotama, Kutsa, Kakshīvān, Paruchchhepa, Dīrghatamas, Agastya.

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Still later two further additions were made to the hymn material of the school. As these two collections each contain a large number of hymns from the last of the seven famous families mentioned above,¹ the family of Kaṇva, and have also a number of common features, it is likely that they had a common origin, and were introduced to the great school at the same time. One group was prefixed to the old material, the other affixed. So that the body of sacred poetry now stood thus: Ia + Ib + II-VII + VIII.

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¹ § 9.

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Then the ninth book came into existence. It consists exclusively of Soma hymns dedicated to Soma Pavamāna, ‘clearly-flowing Soma’. Hymns which belonged to each of the seven great families represented in Books II-VIII are gathered together here. This collection is thus a sort of preliminary Sāmaveda. Though collected later than the hymns of Books I-VIII, the hymns of Book IX are perhaps as early as any in the whole collection.

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It is probable that by this time the whole body of hymns of praise (richas), regarded by the priests as precious knowledge (veda), was called Rigveda.

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We now attempt to understand in outline the religion reflected in Books I-IX of the Rik.

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§ 11. The following are the names of most of the noticeable gods of the Aryans, disposed as the people were accustomed to arrange them, in three categories, according as their function was exercised upon earth, in the region of the air, or in the heaven of light:

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*Lower gods*: Agni, Soma.

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*Middle gods*: Indra, Maruts, Rudra, Parjanya, Vāyu, the Ṛibhus.

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*Upper gods*: Viṣṇu, Sūrya, Savitṛi, Pūshan, the Aśvins, Ushas, Aditi and her three sons, Varuṇa, Mitra, Aryaman.

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But these three lists are not exhaustive. Several other divinities are named; waters, rivers, and mountains are recognized as divine; and tools and implements, especially the sacrificial implements, receive adoration and are expected to hear and answer prayer.

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Indra is the most prominent god in the *Rigveda*; for more than one-fourth of the hymns are dedicated to him. He is primarily the regent of the sky. Young and strong, brilliant as the sun, ruddy and golden, he comes riding in his far-shining car to the sacrifice, eats the flesh of bulls and buffaloes, drinks vast quantities of soma, and listens to the hymns recited and chanted in his honour. These stimulate his vital energies and rouse him to his utmost courage. He then assails with thunderbolt and lightning-flash the malevolent demons who keep the rain locked up and swiftly defeats them. The cloud-castles are stormed, and the waters, set free, rush down in fierce torrents on the earth. Naturally this heavenly warrior became the national god of the Aryan invaders. He is praised as the monarch of heaven and earth, the controller of the destinies of men, and the friend and helper of those who offer him sacrifice.

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Agni and Soma, who come next after Indra in prominence in the *Rigveda*, are also nature-divinities, the one Fire, the other the intoxicating drink made from the soma-plant; but they both owe their great position to their connexion with the ritual. The two chief forms of sacrificing were the offering of milk, butter, grain, and flesh in the altar-fire, and the setting out of great bowls of soma on the sacred grass for the gods to drink. Since through the fire the offerings are presented to the gods, Agni is the great priest of the gods. Soma lives in the divine plant of that name which is the drink of the gods in heaven, and which, transplanted to earth, exhilarates man and delights all the gods at the sacrifices. Both gods are spoken of as doing the work of creator and upholder of the universe. The hymns of the ninth book were sung at the sacrifices in honour of Soma.

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Varuna is the noblest figure in the *Rigveda*. He is connected with the day-sky, the night-sky, and the waters. But he has lofty cosmical functions as well. He upholds heaven and earth, and he is the supporter of all beings. He wields all the powers of *rita*, i.e. divine law, both physical and moral; therefore his ordinances are fixed and can never be shaken. All natural things are subject to them, and he watches to see whether men obey his lofty laws. He rewards the righteous, punishes the wrongdoer (frequently with dropsy), and releases the sinner from his sin when he comes with prayer and oblation. He is the wise guardian of immortality.

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But the most significant trait in his character is this, that he is always righteous. We have already seen that Varuṇa is the Vedic counterpart of Ahura Mazda of the religion of Zoroaster. He must have been a god of distinctly ethical character in the period before the Indo-Iranian people fell apart, and in his prominence in the *Rigveda* and in the lofty attributes which he wears we must see evidence of an Indian development parallel to Zoroaster's selection of Mazda to be the one god of his high ethical monotheism. It begins to look as if the two movements may have been roughly contemporaneous; for scholars are more and more inclined to assign to Zoroaster a date about 1000 B.C. rather than the traditional date of 600 B.C.¹ But Varuṇa failed to reach supremacy; the warrior Indra became the leading divinity of the *Rigveda*; and India failed to develop an ethical theism.

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¹ Moulton, *TM.* 6, 13; Oldenberg, *LU.* 4.

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The religion of the *Rigveda* is probably the most interesting polytheism reflected in any literature. It certainly has not the grace and charm of the pantheon of the Homeric poems; but it stands nearer the origin of the gods, and enables us to see them at the most significant stage of their evolution. All the great, and nearly all the minor gods, are deified natural phenomena, and the interest of the presentation springs from the fact that they are still identified with those glorious things and yet are distinguished from them. They are still thought of as being actually dawn, sun, moon, sky, rain, wind, thunder, fire: men actually offer sacrifice to the reddening dawn, to the sun as he mounts the heavens, and to the crackling fire on the hearth; yet each god is conceived as a glorious living being who has his home in heaven, and who comes sailing in his far-shining car to the sacrifice and sits down on the sacred grass to hear his own praises recited and sung and to receive the offerings. Further, each divinity is held to have influence on things far beyond that phase of the physical world which is his source. He is believed to be able to give his worshippers blessings of many kinds, victory, prosperity, cattle, wealth, children. The greatest gods are connected with the creation and upholding of the world, and Varuṇa holds in his hands all divine law, both physical and moral. This ambiguous position then—each glittering god still struggling to release his gorgeous wings from the clinging chrysalis of his natural source—gives them their peculiar charm and interest, and shows us mythology in the making; but it also prevents the development of distinct personality in the gods and makes them natural rather than moral beings.

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Though there is much superstition in the *Ṛigveda*, and even the great gods, with the exception of Varuṇa, are not beings of holy character, yet the black arts are held in check, and human sacrifices, cruel rites, eroticism, and other horrors are noticeably absent. The religion is, on the whole, a healthy, happy system. Neither asceticism nor austerity, neither pessimism nor philosophy, disturbs the sunshine of that early day.

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§ 12. The worship reflected in the hymns circles round the great sacrifices, which are to be carefully distinguished from the simple oblations which each householder offered in the household fire daily. The great sacrifices were not public acts of worship attended by all the people, like the sacrifices of Israel, of Greece, or of Rome.

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A chieftain, a noble, or any other wealthy man simply employed the necessary priests and had the rites carried out for himself. A sacrifice held by a chieftain would have a sort of public significance, if it was intended to secure prosperity for his rule or victory in war; yet, even in that case, it was a personal act, and benefited, in the first instance, the sacrificer and his family alone.

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The sacrifices were held in the open air or in a shed erected for the purpose near the house of the sacrificer. No temples or sacred places existed in those days. The word *vedi*, i. e. altar, seems to denote in the *Ṛigveda* the area on which the rite was carried out. It was strewn with sacred grass, that the gods might come and sit down on it. Upon the *vedi* the oblations were laid out; and there also were the sacred fires prepared. The chief oblations were milk, melted butter, grain, and cakes. The Adhvaryu shed them on the fire and muttered his formulae the while. At certain points in the ceremonies the Hotṛi recited hymns.

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In the Soma-sacrifice the priests brought the twigs of the soma plant, expressed the juice with the press-stones, purified it, mixed it with milk, and then poured it into basins and set it out on the altar for the gods to drink. The soma-hymns were sung by the Udgātṛi while the Adhvaryu was busy with these ritual acts. The sacrificer, being by the rites admitted to the company of the gods, then drank of the divine beverage, and was thereby made a new man.¹ The priest also drank of the soma.

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¹ Haug, *AB*. I. 60.

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Animal sacrifice—the goat, the ox, the cow, the ram, or the horse—accompanied both the fire-oblations and the soma-rites. The animals were killed and cut up according to rule, and pieces were laid out on the altar, while certain parts were burned in the fire. The horse-sacrifice had already a highly developed ritual, several hymns specially composed for it being found in the *Ṛik*.² The flesh was divided between the sacrificer and the priests.

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² I. 162, 163; IV. 38, 39, 40.

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Without the help of skilled priests, these great sacrifices were quite impossible. Hence an advanced sacerdotal training already existed, and is alluded to in the hymns. By the time the nine books of the *Ṛik* were gathered, the priests formed a distinct profession, though they had not yet developed into a caste.

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§ 13. The boons which the worshippers ask for are in most cases material blessings, prosperity, wealth, cattle, rich crops, chariots, wives, children, health, long life, protection from danger, victory in war, and rich spoil. Yet not infrequently immortality is prayed for. There are also numerous prayers for release from sin and its consequences. Usually sacrifice, a hymn, or faithful worship, is made the ground for the gift of pardon and health, but once or twice something approaching real penitence appears. Yet the overwhelming impression made by the *Rigveda* is that the spirit of religion is worldly and indeed tends to be mercenary.

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§ 14. There are many passages in which the highest cosmical and divine functions are attributed to Indra, or Agni, or Soma, or some other god. How was it possible to attribute these lofty powers now to one god, now to another? To describe this pose of mind Max Müller coined the word Henotheism, the elevation to supremacy of one god at a time. While the poet invokes the god, he is to him the only possible Supreme, and he does not stint his praises by any thought of another; yet the following day he may ascribe the same lofty powers to a second divinity. To this may be added the thought that, monotheism being the only fully rational faith, the human mind, in proportion to its purity, reverence, and openness, is unconsciously drawn towards it. But we must also recognize that the gods of the *Rigveda* do not stand out in clear individuality and distinctness the one from the other. They are personifications of nature, lack character, and tend to melt into one another.

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§ 15. There followed a considerable interval of time during which these nine books were used as the hymn-book of the tribes. The life of the people was expanding, and they were extending their hold on the country. They had now reached

ii. Ṛik, X; Sāman; Early Yajus.

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the upper waters of the Jumna; and the fertile band of country between the Jumna and the Ganges was being occupied farther and farther south. Many of the better aboriginal tribes had been brought into friendly relations with the Aryans, and were settling down beside them to serve as labourers or as household servants. These accepted aborigines were called Śūdras. The position of the priests was steadily becoming more prominent and assured. In consequence, social distinctions were becoming deeper and more marked. The priests were more and more unwilling to intermarry with the other classes; and the Aryan community as a whole wished to avoid mixture with aborigines, both those accepted as Śūdras and those excluded as Outcastes.

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The power of the priests over the gods was more and more recognized, their services more highly appreciated. Hence they were now frequently asked to assist in marriage and funeral ceremonies, which in earlier days were conducted entirely by the house-father himself, and to perform certain magic rites for individuals, both men and women. Religious unrest was producing philosophical speculation and also a tendency to the practice of austerities. Naturally this varied and growing activity led to the composition of new hymns. Many of them were meant for the old sacrifices, others for use at weddings, funerals, and the feast in commemoration of the fathers; some dealt with those religious and philosophical questions which were beginning to trouble the advancing community; and others were composed for use as incantations in sorcery and magic.

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§ 16. Finally, some scholar gathered together a very varied collection of 191 pieces, and it was introduced into the schools and taught as the last section of the oral curriculum of hymns. There were now ten groups of hymns, the ten books of the Ṛigveda. As the first book also contains 191 hymns, the whole became a noble series of ten collections, the first and the last balancing each other in the number of their hymns. There can be no doubt that the hymns of the tenth

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book belong to several different periods. Some of them are quite old; most are clearly subsequent to the hymns of the first nine books; and a few are very late indeed. The ninetieth hymn, usually called the Hymn of Creation, contains a number of developed philosophical concepts, refers to the Caste system, and mentions the names of at least three of the Vedas. Thus we must recognize that, when the collection was completed, the *Sāmaveda* and the *Yajurveda* were already in existence, at least in some primitive form, and that the Caste system was at least taking shape.

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§ 17. The interpretation of the *Rigveda* is not yet scientifically certain in all respects. No ancient commentary on the whole work has come down to us, though there are manuals dealing with certain groups of phenomena, which date from 500 B.C. or earlier. The earliest commentary preserved on the text as a whole was written in the fourteenth century, by the great scholar Sāyaṇa. Thus there need be no surprise if there are many passages in the hymns which are still incomprehensible.

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The age of the *Rigveda* is still very uncertain. Max Müller in his *Ancient Sanskrit Literature*, published in 1859, suggested 1200 to 1000 B.C. as the lowest limits that could be postulated for the composition of the Vedic hymns, and 1000 to 800 B.C. for the formation of the collections. Others are inclined to believe that longer time is required for the development; while a few are convinced that the hymns imply the lapse of thousands of years. Scholars seem to incline towards Müller’s dates rather than to these extreme figures.¹

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¹ Müller, *ASL.* 572; Macdonell, 11-12; Winternitz, I. 246 ff.; Thibaut, *Hindustan Review*, Jan. 1904; Jacobi, *JRAS.* 1909, 721; Oldenberg, *JRAS.* 1909, 1095; Keith, *TS.* I. clxvi; *JRAS.* 1909, 1100.

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§ 18. With the increasing elaboration of the sacrifices, and the consequent emergence of many new duties for the priests, division of labour became unavoidable. It proved more and more necessary that a man should restrict himself to the functions of a *Hotṛ*, an *Udgātṛ*, or an *Adhvaryu*, instead of attempting to become proficient in all three. Hence the need for a distinct education for each type of priest made itself felt. Perhaps in the formation of the ninth book of the *Ṛik*, which consists exclusively of Soma-hymns, we may trace the beginnings of the movement. But a time came when something more was required.

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In the case of the man who sang the strophes at the Soma-sacrifice, the Udgātṛi, two forms of training were required. He had to learn to sing, readily and accurately, all the tunes that were used in the many distinct Soma-sacrifices, and he had also to know which strophes were required for each sacrifice and in what order they were sung. Therefore, that the young priest might master all the tunes thoroughly and have any one at command at any moment, each was connected with a single stanza of the right metre, and the teacher made his pupils sing it over and over again, until tune and stanza were firmly imprinted, in indissoluble association, in the memory. In the Kauthuma school at least, the Udgātṛi student was taught 585 tunes, married to as many single verses. The whole collection of stanzas was called the *Ārchika*, i. e. the book of praises. For mnemonic reasons, the stanzas are arranged in several large groups according to the deities to whom they are dedicated, and the groups are subdivided into sets of ten. Then the strophes used in the ritual of the Soma-sacrifice were arranged in the order in which they were sung, and were taught to Udgātṛi students in this form instead of the *Ṛigveda*. The practical value of this step will be at once apparent. The young priest, in committing the strophes to memory, learnt also at which sacrifices and at what point in each sacrifice they were used. There are 400 strophes in the collection, the great majority consisting of three stanzas each, the whole comprising 1,225 stanzas. This collection was called the *Uttarārchika*, or second praise-book. All the stanzas contained in the two *Ārchikas*, with the exception of seventy-five, are taken from the *Ṛigveda*; so that, from the point of view of the hymns, these books are of little interest in comparison with the *Ṛik*. These two, the musical collection and the sacrificial liturgy, were taught in special schools; and, since the knowledge, *veda*, which they taught was the songs or chants, *sāmāni*, required for the sacrifice, it was called the *Sāmaveda*, and the schools were called schools of the *Sāmaveda*. In those early days the music, as well as the stanzas, was taught orally; but, at a considerably later date, when writing began to be used in the schools for various purposes, tune-books, called *gānas*, were prepared. In these the tunes were indicated by a system of musical notes, and the words of the hymns were set down precisely as they were sung, with many vowels prolonged, many syllables repeated, and other extra-textual syllables interpolated at various places. These interpolated syllables, called *stobhas*, praises—e. g. *hun, hin, hai, hau, hoyi, huva, hoi*, &c.—are the exact counterpart of the jubila interpolated in Plain-song in the ninth and tenth centuries.¹ There were two *gānas* connected with the *Ārchika*, one *Grāmageyagāna*, for use in the village, the other *Āraṇyagāna*, for use in the case of those texts which, for one reason or another, were held so sacred as to be sung only in the seclusion of the forest.

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¹ Fox Strangways, *Music of Hindustan*, 255.

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§ 19. From the earliest days it had been customary for the sacrificer, the *Hotṛi*, to accompany each ritual-act of the sacrifice with some short phrase, either to indicate its significance, its purpose, or the god for whom it was meant, or to invoke some blessing with it, or to prevent the act from having a dangerous result. The priest muttered these phrases, taking care that he should not be overheard. They were of the nature of incantations and dedications rather than prayer and praise. When the recitation of hymns of praise became the chief duty of the *Hotṛi* priest, and the working-priest, the *Adhvaryu*, was appointed to do the manual acts, the latter naturally took over also the duty of muttering these ritual formulae: the name is *yajus*, plural *yajūṃshi*. Rather later still, it became customary for the *Adhvaryu* to utter, at certain points in the ritual, in addition to the old formulae, praises and prayers consisting of stanzas taken from hymns of the *Rigveda* or from other sources.

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§ 20. The formation of these special schools for Udgātṛis and Adhvaryus necessarily led to the old schools of the *Rigveda* becoming special training-schools for the Hotṛi priests. We must also conclude that, from the time of the rise of these new schools, there were three distinct orders of priests; but there was no rule precluding a priest from exercising the functions of two, or even of all the three orders, provided he had acquired the necessary training. The mass of men, however, would be content with the curriculum of a single school. By this time the priests had become a closed caste and called themselves Brāhmans. Each Brāhman priest received his education in one of the three types of schools and was known thereafter as a member of the school.

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§ 21. In our first survey we dealt with the first nine books of the *Ṛik*; so that the fresh literature which we now examine is the tenth book of the *Ṛik*, the *Sāman* and the original *Yajurveda*. For practical purposes we may take Books I–XVIII of the *White Yajus* as representing, with fair accuracy, the extent of the original work. Since nearly the whole text of the *Sāmaveda* is taken unchanged from the *Ṛik*, it is not of so much importance as the other two sources. The most prominent features of the new situation are these: the community is now sharply divided into four groups by caste

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Probably about the time when the schools of the *Sāmaveda* came into existence, or rather later, the training of the Adhvaryu took a fixed traditional form in special schools conducted for the purpose. The essential part of the tradition was the body of ritual formulae in prose and the prayers in verse which accompanied the ritual acts; but detailed instruction, in one form or another, must have been also given about the ritual acts themselves. The mass of material having for its nucleus the formulae, *yajūṃshi*, which accompanied the ritual, gave the Adhvaryu the knowledge, *veda*, necessary for his work, and was therefore called *Yajurveda*.

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distinctions—Brāhmans, Kshatriyas, Vaiśyas, Śūdras; and there are three orders of priests, each possessing a Veda taught in schools belonging to the order. The religion reflected in the literature is wider and more varied than it appeared in the glimpse we had in the *Rik*, I-IX. The prose formulae muttered by the Adhvaryu in accompaniment to the ritual acts are clearly a very old constituent of the cult, older indeed than the hymns; but the actual formulae contained in the *Yajurveda* are probably of very varied age: some may be very old, others quite new; so that we must be cautious about attributing the whole to very early times. But, although the individual phrases are of indeterminate age, the fundamental thought involved in them, especially the magic character of the whole system, is clearly old. With this agrees the magic power attributed to the tunes sung by the Udgātṛi priests, and to the metres of the hymns. Hence the presence in the tenth book of the *Rigveda* of a considerable number of incantations for use in private magic rites probably does not indicate any new access of faith in these operations, but merely an increased willingness on the part of priests trained in the schools to officiate in these ceremonies. The priests are more prominent than ever; for they are now an organized body, the chief of the four castes, and are believed to wield almost limitless supernatural power. The pantheon has not changed materially in the interval; but priestly authority and magical conceptions seem to be gradually weakening the position of the gods, and there is evidence of the existence of considerable religious unrest and scepticism and of various efforts made to cope with it.

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The gods and their attributes appear in our source in all essentials the same as they do in the first nine books of the *Rigveda*; yet certain changes are visible. A few new gods make their appearance; some divinities, notably *Ushas*, *Varuṇa*, and *Parjanya*, receive less attention than formerly, while others have risen to new prominence. Of these the most noteworthy are *Vishṇu* and *Rudra*, who have already begun that mysterious upward movement, which gradually raised them above all their Vedic compeers, and made them the two supreme divinities of modern Hinduism. So far as our evidence goes, it would seem as if Vishnu owed his first elevation to his being identified with the sacrifice by the Adhvaryu priests. In that sense his name occurs in hundreds of passages in the Yajurveda. One of the more prominent elements of the same work is the Śatarudrīya, a famous hymn of praise to Rudra, which is decisive evidence of his growing importance.

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§ 22. The existence of the three Vedas enables us to get a more vivid idea of the sacrifices which formed almost the whole cult of the gods. The great sacrifices were either obligatory or voluntary. Of the obligatory rites the most noteworthy were the New Moon and the Full Moon sacrifices and the sacrifice to Ancestors observed every month, and a few similar observances which occurred less often. Of the voluntary ceremonies the most elaborate and expensive were the Soma-sacrifices. The Aśvamedha or Horse-sacrifice was meant to secure all blessings for a prince, including even imperial sway. Another type of ceremony, which any wealthy man might undertake, was the Agnichayana, or the building of a fire altar of great elaboration of design.

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§ 23. There are a number of hymns in the tenth book of the Rik, which seem to have been taught in the schools with a view to being used in the contests of wit which closed the sacrifices. There are two collections of riddles, and about a dozen dialogues; but the largest and most interesting group are speculative pieces springing from the new religious situation. One is a hymn in praise of faith, one describes the ascetic, and another deals with tapas or self-mortification, while the remainder, eleven in number, form the fountainhead of Indian philosophy. In our first survey we learned that priests trained in the schools had begun to practise private magic and to use certain hymns contained in the Rigveda as spells. By the time the tenth book was compiled

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things had gone farther: a large number of incantations are included in it.

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There is no hint of the doctrine of transmigration in our sources. Men live and die once. They pray that they may live a hundred autumns. When good men die, Yama guides them to his heavenly home and there they live in immortality and joy. They are then called the Fathers.

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§ 24. We have already seen that a number of spells for use in magic are contained in the Rik. The character of these poems proves that the old-world incantations which the Aryans, in common with other Indo-European peoples, had been accustomed to use had, in the main at least, given way before a new type of spell, written in polished language and metre, on the model of the hymns to the gods. Doubtless, hundreds of these were being used by sorcerers, exorcists, and magicians, although only a few found their way into the hymn-book of the priests; and the process of composition continued after the canon of the Rigveda was closed. The incantation-priest had no lack of wealthy clients ready to pay well for his magic arts and poetical charms instinct with supernatural power. Hence numerous hymns from the Rigveda were turned to these purposes; philosophic poems were perverted to more mysterious uses, their sounding phrases and incomprehensible concepts rendering them most formidable to the ear; and many new incantations were composed to fit into the detailed ritual of magic, both black and white. The man of muttered charms was usually summoned also to do the priestly duties in the domestic ceremonies, which were observed at the time of birth, marriage, death, and such like.

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§ 25. Then, during the period of the Brāhmaṇas, a school was formed for the training of this class of priests, and quite naturally a great collection of these incantations was made the text-book of the school. This text-book is the Atharvaveda. It has come down to us in two recensions, named

iii. Brāhmaṇas, Atharvan, Āraṇyakas.

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Śaunakīya and Paippalāda. The former is the text in ordinary use, and it alone has been edited, translated, and examined in detail. A single birch-bark manuscript of the Paippalāda was found in Kashmir in 1874, and a facsimile reproduction has been published. There is a good deal of difference between the two recensions in the way in which the hymns are arranged; and about one-eighth or one-ninth of the contents of the Paippalāda MS. is fresh material, found neither in the Śaunakīya recension nor in any other Vedic collection. Since so little investigation has been carried out on the new text, we shall confine our attention to the Śaunakīya or Vulgate.

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It is probable that the *Atharvaveda* was built up to its present proportions in various stages, but we do not know the history. Each of the two recensions consists of twenty books, but the order by no means corresponds. In the Vulgate it is clear that Books XIX and XX are late additions. Books I to XVIII fall into three divisions. The first covers Books I to VII, and consists in the main of short hymns, arranged in accordance with the number of stanzas they contain, and without reference to their subject-matter. The second contains Books VIII to XII and consists of long hymns on miscellaneous subjects. In the third division, Books XIII to XVIII, each book consists of hymns which are marked by essential unity of subject. Various attempts have been made to decide how these three groups were brought together, but no unanimity has yet been reached.

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Scholars point out that a number of the shorter spells of the *Atharvaveda* agree in purpose and method, and to some extent also in form, with charms found in the folk-lore of other nations of the Indo-European race; so that the roots of the practices of this Veda go very far back indeed. About 1,200 of the 6,000 stanzas contained in the work are taken from the *Ṛigveda*. But the bulk of the fresh material is of later origin.¹ Part of it is in prose, the rest in verse. The compilation of the eighteen books took place long after the completion of the *Rigveda*, during the period of the *Brāhmaṇas*.

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¹ So Oldenberg, *RV.* 15: Keith agrees.

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For a long time the Atharvan collection held a very humble position as compared with the three sacrificial Vedas. It was not accepted as a Veda at all. The *trayīvidyā*, triple knowledge, was all that men recognized. To this day in certain parts of South India it is almost unknown.

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§ 26. The priestly schools soon became great and learned associations each with a splendid reputation. The student had first of all to learn the Veda of his school with perfect accuracy from the lips of his teacher. He had then, in the second place, to receive a great deal of instruction as to his duties at the altar, and numerous explanations of the meaning of the hymns, the ritual acts, and such like. The instructions were called *vidhi*, the explanations *arthavāda*. For some time these lectures were given by the teacher in an unfettered way in his own language; but gradually in each school the material took more definite form, and finally was handed down in stereotyped language from teacher to pupil, generation after generation. Naturally, it was in prose. Every piece of instruction of this type was called a *Brāhmaṇa*, either as being the utterance of a *Brāhman*, or as an exposition of religious truth (*brahman*). In contrast with these *Brāhmaṇas*, the hymns and prose formulae which were recited, sung, or muttered during the sacrifices were called *mantras*. The word *mantra* means originally religious thought, prayer, sacred utterance, but from an early date it also implied that the text was a weapon of supernatural power.

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