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An Outline of the Religious Literature of India c6.s2: ii. Ṛik, X; Sāman; Early Yajus.

An Outline of the Religious Literature of India c6.s2

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English

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

Cites (7)