The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c8.2

v1.c8.2

THE oldest and most important of the sources for Indian religion is the collection of 1,028 hymns known as the Rigveda Saṁhitā, which has been handed down to us in the Çākala recension. Preserved in its early stages by oral tradition and long regarded as too sacred to be reduced to writing, the text affords abundant internal proof of the general accuracy with which it was preserved. Moreover, an invaluable form of control exists in the texts of the other Vedas, the Yajurveda in its different recensions, the Sāmaveda, and the Atharvaveda, all of which contain much of the matter of the Rigveda. The older view, that in these texts might be found traces of earlier forms of the verses of the Rigveda, has not borne close examination and comparison in detail:¹ with a very few possible exceptions the variations which are found in these texts from the Rigveda can be unhesitatingly classed as products either of an inferior tradition on the one hand or of deliberate alteration on the other. Similarly the efforts which have been made by Hillebrandt² to prove that, in a stage earlier than that recorded, the Rigveda was a definitely practical collection of hymns, arranged according to their connexion with the sacrificial ritual, must be pronounced to have failed.³ Whereas all the other Saṁhitās, except the Atharvaveda, which occupies a peculiar position, are definitely in their non-Brāhmaṇa portions manuals of the chants and formulae used by the priests in the ritual, the Rigveda is not a practical but a historical hand-book. It must represent a collection of hymns made by unknown hands at a time when for some unrecorded reason it was felt desirable to preserve the religious poetry current among the Vedic tribes.