The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c9.2

v1.c9.2

ALREADY in the Rigveda there are signs of considerable elaboration of ritual and of the employment of a number of priests at the sacrifice, and the later Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas reveal to us a time when the functions of the priesthood have been definitely divided up and apportioned among sets of priests. The manual acts of the sacrifice are ascribed to the Adhvaryu priest and his assistants and are accompanied by muttered formulae, in prose or verse, styled Yajus: in addition at the greatest sacrifices, such as the Soma sacrifice, singers chant Sāmans, and reciters recite Çastras, while the Brahman priest supervises the whole performance, usually in silence. On this division of functions is based the division of the later Saṁhitās: the Sāmans are preserved in the song books of the Sāmaveda, the Yajuses in the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda is held to be connected with the Brahman priest, while the Çastras were composed of verses taken from the Rigveda. From the point of view of religion the Sāmaveda is mainly interesting for its form: the words which were sung were almost invariably taken from the Rigveda, but they were eked out as shown in the song-books, Gānas, with all kinds of interjections, doubtless for musical purposes, which must have converted their character in the most marked degree. The sense of the words cannot possibly have been understood in the mutilated form in which the chants were sung, and the conclusion is inevitable that their religious value lay not in the substance but in the form, so that the Sāmans have been compared, not altogether unaptly, to the revival hymns beloved by the African negro in the new world. In them doubtless the religious excitement of the priest found its fullest scope for expression.¹ That this form of chant was old need not be doubted: there are clear traces in the Rigveda itself in the strophic and metrical form of certain of the hymns,² that they were from the first intended for something more lively than mere recitation. With this fact accords the generally close relation of the Sāmaveda and the Rigveda, which renders it probable that that was of the first of the later Saṁhitās to take definite form.