The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c8.73

v1.c8.73

The accusation, however, which is often made against the Rigveda of being purely sacerdotal cannot be accepted, for it contains enough matter in its later portions to show that the compilers were perfectly familiar with the popular religion of the day. Thus we have hymns intended to act as spells against vermin,¹ or the disease Yakṣma,² to bring back the life of one apparently dead,³ to destroy enemies,⁴ to procure children,⁵ to destroy the demon who kills offspring,⁶ to induce sleep,⁷ and even to oust a co-wife from a husband's affections.⁸ Most of these hymns occur in book x, which preserves also the marriage hymn,⁹ a piece of priestly ingenuity, and the funeral hymns.¹⁰ These with four or five gnomic hymns,¹¹ some philosophic and cosmogonic speculations,¹² and some hymns, or portions of hymns, in praise of generous patrons of the priests relieve the monotony of the collection, and help to obviate the wholly erroneous view that the early religion of India consisted merely in the invocation of high gods.¹³ But the real extent of the popular religion and much of the hieratic must be sought for in the later Saṁhitās, and above all in the Atharvaveda.