The Vedas of the Aryans

Precisely how and when the hymns of the Aryans were first composed we shall never know. Much in them is and always will be obscure. What scrupulous scribe first toilsomely wrote them out is not recorded. But thereafter, though the language of those hymns became less and less familiar the psalm-books into which they were gathered were practically never altered and the student to-day has little doubt that the text before him is almost syllable for syllable, as it was three thousand years ago; often as it was when it was composed and sung at some sacrifice in the years before the Aryans had done more than make raids into the land of the Five Rivers.

The existence of a sacred literature in Sanskrit was known to some of the first Roman Catholic missionaries in India, and men like Robert de Nobili who arrived in Madura in 1606 and Constantine Beschi a century later acquired sufficient knowledge of it to compose and argue in it. But the translation of the Bhagavad Gita, by Charles Wilkins, published in 1785, and of Sakuntala, by Sir Williams Jones, published in 1789, were the real commencement of the scientific study of the Sanskrit language, and the publication and translation of the most important works in that language. Yet for a long time it was difficult to obtain accurate knowledge of the Vedas. Very few manuscript copies were in existence, and while the pandits were willing to communicate the manuscripts of the later and less sacred Sanskrit works of law, philosophy and drama to Englishmen resident in India, they were not willing to show them the manuscripts of the more ancient and infinitely more holy Vedas. In some cases where the manuscripts of the Vedas had come into western hands, the pandits would not translate them. Colebrooke (1765–1837) alone seemed able to overcome these prejudices and his essays On the Vedas, or the Sacred Writings of the Hindus though published in 1805 are of permanent value.

Nearly a quarter of a century later a young German scholar named Friedrich Rosen began to work at an edition of the Sanskrit text of the Rig-veda for publication. Max Müller relates an incident which shows the opinion of the intrinsic value of the hymns of the Vedas held by a highly-educated Hindu thinker, and probably by not a few others, at that time. The Raja Rammohun Roy was in London and saw Friedrich Rosen at the British Museum busily engaged in copying manuscripts of the Rig-veda. The Raja was surprised, and told Rosen that he ought not to waste his time on the hymns, but that he should study the Upanishads.¹ Rosen published a specimen of the hymns of the Rig-veda in 1830, but he died before he had nearly completed his task. Only the first book of the Rig-veda, with a Latin translation, was finished by him and published after his death in 1838.

In 1845 Max Müller was at work in Paris, copying from manuscripts the text of the Rig-veda together with the commentary of Sayana Acharya. Sayana died in 1387 at Vijayanagara, the capital of the famous Hindu kingdom founded about 1340 which is now a long stretch of ruins known as Hampi in the Bellary district of the Madras Presidency. He was teacher and minister of one of the kings of that dynasty, and was younger brother of Madhava Acharya, the author of the compendium of philosophical systems called the Sarva-darsana-samgraha.² Sayana’s commentary no doubt embodied the opinion of the most learned pandits of the time, and though composed perhaps almost three thousand years later than the hymns contains exceedingly valuable traditional interpretations. The East India Company authorized Max Müller to bring out an edition of the hymns with this commentary at its expense. The first volume appeared in 1849. The publication of the edition was completed within about twenty years. The price of the six volumes was £5. The second edition, in four volumes, was brought out at the expense of the then Maharajah of Vizianagaram, and sold at £8. This is regarded as the standard edition both of the text of the Rig-veda and of Sayana’s commentary.

The text of the Rig-veda was published in roman letters at Berlin in 1861. The text of the Sama-veda, with a German translation, was published by Benfey in 1848.

Various texts of the different recensions of the Yajur-veda have been edited by A. Weber, and L. von Schroeder. The text of the Atharva-veda was published by Roth and Whitney in 1856; and another recension from a single ancient birch-bark manuscript discovered by Professor Bühler in Kashmir is being prepared by Dr. Maurice Bloomfield.

An English translation of the Rig-veda, based on the interpretations contained in the commentary of Sayana was commenced in 1850 by Professor H. H. Wilson, the first professor of Sanskrit at Oxford. Part of it was published after his death. Professor E. B. Cowell in his preface to the fifth volume says that ’this work does not pretend to give a complete translation of the Rig-veda, but only a faithful image of that particular phase of its interpretation which the mediaeval Hindus, as represented by Sayana have preserved'.

A translation of many of the hymns of the Rig-veda entitled The Sacral Hymns of the Brahmans was prepared by Max Müller, and published in Trübner’s Oriental Series, in two volumes.

A translation of many of the hymns entitled Vedic Hymns, by Max Müller and Oldenberg appears in the series of translations known as The Sacred Books of the East, published by the University of Oxford.

Perhaps the most helpful of all manuals of Vedic teaching are the five volumes of Original Sanskrit Texts, by Dr. John Muir (Trübner & Co.). They contain classified collections of Vedic and later texts with accurate translations and a vast collection of notes and comments. Dr. Muir’s method enables the student to see for himself the evolution Sanskrit teaching from the earlier ideas, the origin of myths, the development of customs, and the influence of later environment. It is a notable treasure-house of exact scholarship.

Mr. R. T. H. Griffith, formerly Principal of the Sanskrit College, Benares, made complete translations of all four Vedas. Mr. Griffith had the great advantage of long residence in Benares, and some of the most learned pandits in India were his fellow-workers. The notes that accompany his translations are of high value. For the English student this is the most useful rendering, and its completeness makes it more serviceable than any other.³

By reprints of the Sanskrit text, by accurate translations, and by many comments and discussions among scholars in Europe and America and India during the last sixty or seventy years it has rapidly become possible to appreciate the precise value and significance of these ancient hymns, to understand the general circumstances in which they were composed, and the motives that inspired their authors; and thus to become acquainted with Aryan singers and priests at the beginning of Indian civilization.

The sacred books of the Hindus include a wide range of religious literature composed in the Sanskrit language. They are divided into two classes, called Sruti and Smriti. The term Smriti means ‘memory’, ‘recollection’, ’tradition’, and the books denoted by Smriti are the accounts of the gods and goddesses composed in comparatively modern times, known as the eighteen Puranas and the Upa-puranas; the collections of aphorisms dealing with household matters and social and legal usage, such as the Smarta or Grihya Sutras; the Dharma Sutras, and the Law Book of Manu; the six Vedangas, dealing with phonetics, grammar, etymology, religious practice and astrology; and the great epic poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

The term Sruti or ‘hearing’ is that used to indicate what was directly heard by or was revealed to the holy sages of old.⁴ Sruti is thought of as existing from eternity, made known to the sages in time, and transmitted by them to their disciples, but not composed or arranged by them.

The works indicated by the term Sruti are the four Vedas, or Samhitas or collections of hymns or mantras; and the Brahmanas of the Vedas, with their Aranyakas for hermits and their Upanishads.⁵

The term Veda is from the Sanskrit root vid, ’to know’, a root which also appears in the Latin videre, ’to see’, and the English ‘wit’. Veda primarily signifies ‘knowledge’; it designates ‘sacred lore’ as a branch of literature; and is also applied to the book containing the sacred lore.⁶ It is thus used in a general sense to denote the whole body of the most ancient Sanskrit literature, but it particularly refers to the four great collections of hymns that contain the divine wisdom named the Rig-veda, the Yajur-veda, the Sama-veda and the Atharva-veda.

These names of the four Vedas are derived from terms which refer to the different styles of composition found in them. These four names, according to Dr. Maurice Bloomfield, belong to a somewhat later Vedic time; they do not coincide exactly with the earlier names, nor do they fully correspond to the contents of the collections themselves as they now stand. The earlier terms referred to the different styles of composition. They were:

• ricah, stanzas of praise;
• yajunshi, liturgical stanzas and formulas;
• samani, melodies;
• and atharvangirasah, blessings and curses.

But the collection which now goes by the name of Rig-veda contains in its later parts ‘blessings and curses’, as well as ‘stanzas of praise’, together with most of the stanzas which form the text to the saman-melodies of the Sama-veda. Similarly the Atharva-veda contains ricah, ‘stanzas of praise’, and yajunshi, ’liturgical stanzas’ mostly worked over for its own purposes, as well as its characteristic ‘blessings and curses’. The Yajur-veda also contains matter of the other Vedic types in addition to liturgical formulae.

The Sama-veda is merely a collection of certain ricah, or ‘stanzas of praise’, taken with variations and additions from the Rig-veda, and set to tunes indicated by musical notations.⁷

Careful examination shows that these four collections of hymns fall into two groups. In the former are the Rig-veda, the Sama-veda and the Yajur-veda. In the other the Atharva-veda stands alone. This distinction is based on differences in contents, character and date.

The relation of the Rig, Sama and Yajur-vedas is not very complex. The Sama and Yajur-vedas were not independent of the Rig-veda, and both were of later date. The origin of the three may be outlined somewhat as follows: In the earliest times any one might perform sacrifice. Then a priestly class arose distinct from the ordinary people, and it may be supposed that it was during this period that the hymns of the Rig-veda were collected. Speedily, however, as sacrifice and ceremonial was elaborated different orders came into existence among the priests. The highest order was that of the Hotris who recited hymns in praise of the god to whom the sacrifice was being offered while the ceremony was being performed. They recited hymns from the Rig-veda but no special collection of hymns, no samhitā, was ever made for them. For two other classes of priests such collections, or psalm books were made. It was the duty of the Udgatri priests to chant according to certain traditional rules during the sacrifice of Soma, and for this purpose a number of hymns were collected from the Rig-veda, especially from the Eighth and Ninth Books. These hymns form the Sama-veda, and of the 1549 verses in it only seventy-eight are not found in the Rig-veda.

Another collection of hymns was incorporated in a sacrificial service book along with a number of prose directions for performing the sacrifice. It was the manual of the Adhvaryus and contained the verses to be muttered by them and their assistants who prepared the space of ground and the altar, offered the sacrificial victims and poured out the libations. This was the Yajur-veda. Two distinct forms of this Veda have come down to us. In the oldest, the instructions about ritual are mingled with the original verses from the Rig-veda. The chief recension of this is that taught by a school of teachers called the Taittiriyans. At a later date other scholars called the Vājasaneyins separated the dogmatic or explanatory matter from the verses to be recited and the name of ‘clear’ or ‘White’ (Sukla) Yajur-veda, was applied to their recension, the other being called the Black (Krishna) Yajur-veda.

The prose passages of the Yajur-veda are, of course, new matter. The verse portion is chiefly taken from the Rig-veda, but there are some new verses in cases where it was not possible to extract from the Rig-veda verses suitable to the complex ritual that had been elaborated by the later priesthood of the debased form of the Aryan faith current before the rise of the philosophic schools and Buddhism and Jainism.

It is difficult to ascertain clearly the date of the Yajur-veda. It makes use of the Rig-veda, but the verses quoted are taken out of their connexion and adapted to different purposes. There are many new verses about the ritual of the sacrifices. Its characteristic element are the prose formulae, the yajus, which are in prose, and this is the oldest prose literature of the Indo-European peoples. These are sometimes brief prayers or sacrificial phrases and sometimes they are long sentences, full of repetitions, concerning the sacrificial victims or the ceremony. Dr. Bloomfield quotes one that is typical:

May life prosper through the sacrifice. May life’s breath prosper through the sacrifice. May the eye prosper through the sacrifice. May the ear prosper through the sacrifice. May the back prosper through the sacrifice. May the sacrifice prosper through the sacrifice.

Many thousand formulae of this kind are collected in the great concordance of the Vedas prepared by Dr. Bloomfield. Apart from their lack of meaning, they show says he, ‘a formalism and mental decay upon the very brink of dissolution’. And both it and the Brāhmanas belong to a period in the history of religion in India when ceremonial and sacrifice had almost destroyed the simpler religious ideas of the early Aryans.

The Sama-veda is a problem to scholars for its origin and purpose are not clear. There are no connected hymns but verses, generally derived from the Rig-veda, meant to be chanted, and when accompanied by their music these were called samani, melodies. The chanting of these verses was also interrupted by crying aloud formal exclamatory syllables, such as om, hai at certain points or at the end of the stanzas, perhaps something like the shouts that accompany religious processions in India to-day. The Sama-veda was not held in the same repute as the Rig-veda and Yajur-veda and the recitation of either of them had to cease when the shout of samans was heard. Except that it represents the use of chanting in later Aryan worship the Sama-veda adds very little to the information that is to be obtained about the religious practices of the Aryans. And like the Yajur-veda it belongs to the time when priestly formalism dominated the worship of the Aryans.

The last book, Book XX, of the Atharva-veda, is almost entirely made up of hymns taken bodily from the Rig-veda and of hymns compiled from verses of the Rig-veda. Evidently this section has been added to connect the Atharva-veda with the Rig-veda and so to give it more authority, for as a whole the Atharva-veda is plainly of quite a different origin to the rest of the Vedas. It is really a collection of spells, and it may represent the popular beliefs of the common people among the Aryans in some passages, especially as those beliefs were modified by the influence of the demon-worship of the aborigines whom the Aryans conquered. It also contains ideas about the gods belonging to a later period than that of the Rig-veda. While the Rig-veda is the psalm-book of the worship of the Bright Gods, the most salient teaching of the Atharva-veda is sorcery of various sorts. Some spells are benevolent, such as those for health and prosperity, for safety from demons, for establishing harmony in village and family life, and for the reconciliation of enemies, but there is much that is born of fear and horror.

Madame Ragozin justly says:

We have here, as though in opposition to the bright, cheerful pantheon of beneficent deities, so trustingly and gratefully addressed by the Rishis of the Rig, a weird repulsive world of darkly scowling demons, inspiring abject fear, such as never sprang from Aryan fancy. We find ourselves in the midst of a goblin-worship, the exact counterpart of that with which we became familiar in Turanian Chaldea. Every evil thing in nature, from a drought to a fever or bad qualities of the human heart, is personified and made the object of terror-stricken propitiation, or of attempts at circumvention through witchcraft, or the instrument of harm to others through the same compelling force. Here and there, worship takes the form of conjuring, not prayer; its ministers are sorcerers, not priest.⁸

The traditional Hindu view is that the Atharva-veda is inferior to the other Vedas and modern scholarship is convinced that it is not of the same antiquity as the Rig-veda.

Griffith, who has translated it, gives his own opinion and those of other eminent scholars on this point as follows:

I have called the Atharva-veda a comparatively late addition to the three ancient Vedas, of which, it may be observed, one only, the Rig-veda, is original and historical, the other two being merely liturgical compilations. The Atharva is like the Rik, in the main historical and original, but its contents cannot, as a whole, lay claim to equal antiquity.

He also quotes Professor Whitney, one of the most learned of Sanskrit scholars, who wrote:

The greater portion of the hymns are plainly shown, both by their language and internal character, to be of much later date than the general contents of the other historic Veda, and even than its tenth book with which they stand nearly connected in import and origin. . . . This, however, would not imply that the main body of the Atharva hymns were not already in existence when the compilation of the Rik took place. Their character would be ground enough for their rejection and exclusion from the canon until other hands were found to undertake their separate gathering into an independent collection.⁹

Professor Weber concludes that the origin of the Atharva Samhitā dates from the period when Brahmanism had become dominant. In it he finds the worshipper oppressed by anxious dread of the evil spirits of nature and of their magic powers, seeking refuge in ceremonialism. He suggests that, while the Rig-veda contains the songs of the higher Aryan families, the parts of the Atharva-veda that are peculiar to it may belong to the lower ranks, that is to the common people, most likely to be affected by the demon worship of the Dasyus.

The oldest name of the Atharva-veda is atharvangirasah, a compound word made up of the names of two families of priests, the Atharvans and the Angirases.¹⁰ The former name was thought to indicate ‘holy charms’, or ‘blessings’ and the latter ‘witchcraft charms’ or ‘curses’. Thus it is the book of ‘blessings and curses’. It is sometimes called the Bhrigvangirasah, a name in which the word Bhrigus takes the place of the term Atharva with the same meaning of ‘blessings’. It is also called the Brahma-veda, the Veda of the Brahman, that is the Veda of the supervising priest who watched the performance of the Vedic (Srauta) sacrifices. But this name may also be due to the fact that there are included in this Veda hymns which deal with ‘Brahman’, the monistic supreme principle of later Hindu thought.

The Taittirīya Samhitā of the Black Yajur-veda mentions the Rig, Sama and Yajur-vedas alone in several passages (e. g. ii. 4, 12, 7; vii. 3, 1, 4). The Satapatha-brāhmana uses the Vedas and the term trayi-vidyā for the Rig, Sama and Yajur-vedas. The dharma literature also agrees that the Atharvan, while useful and even indispensable under certain circumstances, is on the whole inferior in character and position.

There is, therefore, full justification for considering the Atharva-veda as distinct from the other three and recording a later phase of the Aryans’ religion. It will thus lie outside the scope of this volume to deal with it. At the same time it may be noted that in a brief, rapid and general survey of Vedic teaching, such as this, there will be little need to give detailed attention to the Sama and Yajur-vedas. It is the Rig-veda which gives the most valuable materials to the student of the Aryan religion. The Sama-veda and the Yajur-veda both reflect the time when ceremonialism was corrupting earlier and simpler beliefs. Valuable as they and the Atharva-veda are for a history of the deterioration of the primitive faith as it came in closer relation to the demon worship of the aboriginal peoples of India, they do not give much help to the understanding of the earlier religion. For that appeal must always be made to the Rig-veda, and consequently reference will here be made almost exclusively to the Rig-veda.

Each of the four Vedas is divided into two parts, the Mantras and the Brahmanas.

The Mantras

Mantra means ‘instrument of thought’, speech, a sacred text or saying, a prayer or song of praise, a Vedic hymn in particular, or a sacrificial formula. In modern vernaculars the word is now used to denote a magic spell or incantation and, this meaning is derived from the older idea that the Vedic hymn sung or recited would secure the favour of the gods or avert ill-fortune from them or from human enemies.

The hymns are also called Suktas: a term derived from su-ukta ’that which is well or properly recited.’ This term is used of a Vedic hymn as a whole as distinguished from a rich or single verse.¹¹

The Samhitas

Each entire collection of Mantras forms a Samhita. The Samhita, in the case of the Rig-veda, and of the Sama and Yajur-vedas so far as they are borrowed from it, consist of the songs of the early Aryan sages as they have been handed down by tradition. In the Rig-veda they are nearest in form to the spontaneous utterances of the bards who first sung them. In the Sama and the Yajur-vedas the poetry of the ancient psalmists is moulded by the usage of a later ritual, and does not vibrate with the ancient fervour. The Mantras in the Samhita of the Atharva-veda are of a different order. Incantations, spells, magical formulae form its Samhita, and, as applied to its contents, the term mantra has precisely the meaning which it generally has when used in the South Indian vernaculars.

The Brahmanas

The second part of each Veda, the Brahmana, was drawn up for ceremonial instruction of the Brahmans. They are really directories for the priests who used the Vedas in worship. They contain regulations regarding the employment of the mantras, and the celebration of the various rites of sacrifice, and also include treatises called Aranyakas, and others called Upanishads or Vedantas (so called from their being the concluding portions of each Veda), which expound the mystical sense of some of the ceremonies, and discuss the nature of the godhead, and final liberation.¹²

The Brahmanas as they now exist are of much later date than the hymns of the Vedas, and give a picture of the religion of the Aryans that belongs to the time when priest-craft had elaborated religious ceremonial to an almost impossible degree. On this account any clear picture of the religion of the early Aryans is not to be expected in the Brahmanas. But while the Brahmanas in their present form belong unmistakably to a later age than the collections of hymns to which they are appended, there is in them much of very great antiquity. Dr. K. S. Macdonald summarises their value well in his Brahmanas of the Vedas:

In the Brahmanas there is much that is older than any of the mantras, things, such as myths, legends, stories, to which the mantras clearly allude. In the mantras the ancient Rishis do not tell the stories they refer to, because to them they are things well known requiring no telling—as, for example, the story of Sunahsepha, the various accounts of the creation, etc. The Rishis knew these and took for granted that their audiences knew them, so they merely allude to them in their songs or hymns. Thus, some of the contents of the Brahmanas, constituting folk-lore and mythical and legendary stories, some others of the sacrifices, as also their ideas of the gods, may be and most likely are older than any of the hymns which have come down to us. But this much is certain, that the Brahmanas are the oldest prose compositions now extant, of the Aryan family.¹³

Aranyakas and Upanishads

The Aranyakas and Upanishads are the supreme contribution of Brahmanism to the thought of the world. Professedly the Aranyakas, or ‘forest teachings’, were designed to prepare the pupil for the life of a devotee secluded from the distractions of worldly existence in some forest. The term upanishad seems to denote ‘secret instruction’, only given to a fully-qualified pupil by his teacher, to introduce him to the highest modes of philosophic thought, leading up to that supreme knowledge which insures liberation from human existence.

Although by conventional opinion the Upanishads are part of the Veda, the end of the Veda, or Vedanta, they belong to a date much later than the hymns of the Rig-veda, and represent philosophic and religious conceptions different from those of the Aryans. Even the earliest, the Brihadaranyaka, Chhandogya, Taittirlya, Aitareya, Kaushitaki and Kena Upanishads, though always held to belong to Sruti or Revelation are outside the scope of an inquiry into the religion of the early Aryans. The composition of hymns must have ceased at an early date, and though some hymns not included in the Rig-veda gained acceptance among the priests and appeared in the later Samhitas, they are comparatively few. On the other hand apparently no hesitation was felt about the extension of the Brahmanas, and though some, perhaps many of them have been lost, they form a large literature by themselves. They are sometimes spoken of as sixty or seventy in number and the Upanishads connected with them are said to be as many.

The Sutras

The Brahmanas being in prose, they were, therefore not so readily learned by rote as if they had been in verse. It will be obvious, then, that, as they increased in number, and as the number of subjects taught by the sages were multiplied, their disciples had to find a method that would insure the faithful memory of essential rules and doctrines. Hence series of aphorisms, strings of aphorisms, or Sutras were formulated, reduced to the utmost brevity, indeed so condensed that they are all but unintelligible.

They are not considered parts of the direct divine revelation (sruti). Tradition (smriti) begins with them. These aids to memory are not literature in any true sense. They are simply outline manuals for keeping alive in the pupil’s memory the details of the subjects that they deal with, the subjects of a Hindu Sanskrit student’s education. They were usually summed up under six heads, called the Vedangas, or ‘members of the body’ of the Veda. Of the six, kalpa, ceremonial, is the most important, including three groups of Sutras: the Srauta Sutras, which deal with sacrifices, summarizing the teaching of the Brahmanas; the Grihya or Smarta Sutras, which deal with the ceremonies connected with family life; and the Dharma Sutras, which provide rules of conduct for the various classes of men and the various stages of their life.¹⁴

It may be noted that as the Brahmanical schools grew in number each drew up its own series of Sutras, and that the Sutras of the Sanskrit grammarian Panini, who lived about three hundred years before the Christian era are included in the traditional literature of Brahmanic Hinduism. From their date and character it is clear that these Sutras cannot help to the understanding of the early Aryan faith.

Till a short time ago, perhaps even at the present day, the popular belief among Hindus as to the origin of the Vedas was that they were eternally existent in the mind of the Supreme, and made manifest by him in each kalpa.

The kalpas here referred to are the periods into which, according to Hindu reckoning, the time is divided. Such a kalpa is a ‘day of Brahma,’ and a ‘day of Brahma’ consists of a thousand yugas or ages, amounting altogether to four hundred and thirty-two million years of mortals.¹⁵ At the beginning of each kalpa all the existing universe is created and the Vedas are supposed then to be revealed by Brahma through the rishis. At the close of the kalpa all the existing universe is destroyed and then there is a new creation and a new revelation in the new kalpa.

The sacred books of Hinduism contain many variations of this popular belief, and some theories of the origin of the Vedas that are quite different. Some of these are matter of fact, as when the poets speak of themselves as having made and framed their hymns as a village joiner makes a cart. Some of them belong to the vast collection of stories concerning the gods, which makes them the authors of the sacred books in the same way that they were the creators of the world. Some are plainly symbolic, such as that which calls Vach, the goddess of speech, the mother of the Vedas or says that they sprang from the ’leavings of sacrifice’. The sages themselves distinguish between new hymns and old; but, as it is not possible to discern positively which of the Vedic hymns are the oldest, it is not possible to arrange the various assertions that they contain in any historical order, or even to trace with any confidence, the relation of the various legends, and the only conclusion to which impartial investigation leads is that among all these various, and often inconsistent statements there is no one account of the origin of the hymns that was generally received when or soon after the hymns were composed.¹⁶

And yet, though there is not sufficient evidence to show the exact occasion of any single hymn in the whole collection, there are many hints and allusions in the hymns, and when noted they give at least some general idea of the way in which the various collections came into existence is reached. What happened seems to have been as follows.

All nations in the earlier stage of their civilization regard the utterances of the man who has the gift of poetic song with awe, considering such songs to be the expression of the will of the beings of the mysterious spirit world, or a means to affect their will. When the bard’s songs took the form of prayers and entreaties for the favour of the god on the tribe in hunting or war, or for rain in time of drought, or for children to increase the strength of the tribe before its enemies, or for health in time of pestilence and there was what seemed to be an answer to the petition, the fame of the poet grew great and the wonderful words that had secured blessing were treasured as a spell, or mantra, and so it came about that victory in battle was often ascribed to the virtue of some hymn. Thus it is said in the Rig-veda, vii. 33. 3, ‘So did Indra preserve Sudas in the battle of the ten kings through your prayers, O Vasisthas.’

Sometimes such hymns were remembered and chanted on other occasions by the singer himself. Sometimes it was a follower or servant or pupil or disciple who learned them by rote. Many of these spells were lost after a generation or two. But those that were identified with some special occasion, especially those that had been first uttered at some recurring sacrifice were repeated when the sacrifice was again performed. The Aryans from the most ancient times had offered such sacrifices, though they had no temples and no images, and hymns were always recited at them.

And so hymns which had first been uttered on the occasion of some great need became part of the regular ritual of sacrifice, as charms that had already proved powerful and might again secure divine response. The more notable of them were thus handed down by the descendants of the original bard, and preserved in the families that grew to be the great priestly families of later ages when there were separate orders of priests. Reference to the hymns of the Rig-veda will show traces of this. While the first book of the Rig-veda is called the book of the Satarchins, that is the book of the ‘hundred authors’, some of the other books are each largely ascribed to a single seer (rishi). For example almost every hymn in the second book is ascribed to the rishi Gritsamada; most of the hymns in the third book are said to have been composed by the rishi Viśvāmitra; forty out of the fifty-eight hymns in the fourth book are ascribed to the rishi Vāmadeva, son of Gotama; most of the hymns in the sixth book are the work of Bharadvāja; and all the hymns of the seventh book are ascribed to the rishi Vasistha. The names of these rishis may be taken as the names of ancestors of the priestly families that arose as the Aryans settled in the country known as Kurukshetra, in the plain between the rivers Sutlej and Jumna.

These hymns were then gradually gathered into one great collection by some college of priests, to guard it from change and destruction as religious ceremonial became more elaborate and the priests became more and more scrupulous to use the exact words of the ancients, which were even in those early days probably ceasing to be entirely intelligible to the ordinary folk and therefore liable to alteration. Thus the Rig-veda was compiled.

There was more than one edition of this great collection, but the one that has come down to us is that of the Śākalas.

Probably at first none of these editions was written. Dr. Buhler argues that writing may have been introduced into India by Phoenician traders coming by way of Mesopotamia into India about 800 B.C., but references to writing in ancient India are late and rare, in no case earlier than the fourth century before Christ, and perhaps not very long before the date of the Asokan inscriptions (257 to 231 B.C.). Discussing this Max Müller says that there is not one single allusion in the hymns of the Rig-veda to anything connected with writing.

Pure Brahmans never speak of their granthas or books. They speak of their Veda, which means ‘knowledge’. They speak of their Śruti, which means what they have heard with their ears. They speak of Smriti, which means what their fathers have declared unto them. We meet with Brāhmanas, i.e. the sayings of Brahmans; with Sūtras, i.e. the strings of rules; with Vedāngas, i.e. the members of the Veda; with Pravachanas, i.e. preachings; with Śāstras, i.e. teachings; with Darśanas, i.e. demonstrations; but we never meet with a book, or a volume, or a page.¹⁷

As Professor Macdonell points out sacred learning in India was for very many centuries, indeed until modern times, quite independent of writing. And Dr. Bloomfield holds that Vedic tradition is in this respect the most remarkable in recorded history. There is not one inscription, building, monument, coin, jewel, or utensil from Vedic times. The manuscripts of the Vedas that exist are of comparatively recent date for the early manuscripts perished centuries ago in the furious Indian climate, and of those now existing only a few date back to the fourteenth century of our era and only a very few go back to the twelfth. Yet here is ‘one of the curiosities of Hindu religious life.’ The adherents of each Veda or Vedic school, no matter whether the text of that school was reduced to writing or not, in theory ought to, and in fact many do, actually know their texts by heart. These are the so-called Srotriyas or ‘Oral Traditionists’. They live to this day, being, as it were, living manuscripts of their respective Vedas. ‘The eminent Hindu scholar, the late Shankar Pandurang Pandit, tells us in the preface to his great Bombay edition of the Atharva-veda how he used three of these oral reciters of the Atharva-veda out of a total of only four that were at that time still alive in the Dekkhan; and how their oral authority proved to be quite as weighty as the written authority of his manuscripts. These living manuscripts were respectively, Messrs. Bapuji Jivanram, Kesava Bhat bin Daji Bhat; and Venkan Bhatji, the last the most celebrated Atharva Vaidika in the Dekkhan.’¹⁸

It is in this way that sacred learning in India, through all the centuries till modern times, has been independent of writing. Hymns, rules, speculations have always been learned from the lips of a spiritual teacher (guru) not from a manuscript.

The later sacred books, especially the Upanishads give glimpses of how this learning was imparted, and it is easy to picture what took place. Max Müller’s description is true of disciples in the sacred colleges to-day, as it was of their predecessors in the forest hermitages three thousand years ago.

How then was the Veda learnt? It was learnt by every Brahman during twelve years of his studentship or Brahmacharya. This, according to Gautama, was the shortest period, sanctioned only for men who wanted to marry and to become Grihasthas. Brahmans who did not wish to marry were allowed to spend forty-eight years as students. The Pratiśākhya gives us a glimpse into the lecture-rooms of the Brahmanic Colleges. ‘The Guru,’ it is said, ‘who has himself formerly been a student, should make his pupils read. He himself takes his seat either to the east, or the north, or the north-east. If he has no more than one or two pupils, they sit at his right-hand. If he has more, they place themselves according as there is room. They then embrace their master and say, “Sir read!” The master gravely says, “Om,” i.e. “Yes”. He then begins to say a prasna (a question), which consist of three verses. In order that no word may escape the attention of his pupils, he pronounces all with the high accent, and repeats certain words twice, or he says “so” (iti) after these words.’

It does not seem as if several pupils were allowed to recite together, for it is stated distinctly that the Guru first tells the verses to his pupil on the right, and that every pupil, after his task is finished, turns to the right, and walks round the tutor. This must occupy a long time every day, considering that a lecture consists of sixty- or more prasnas, or of about 180 verses. The pupils are not dismissed till the lecture is finished.

At the end of the lecture, the tutor, after the last half-verse is finished says, ‘Sir,’ the pupil replies ‘Yes, sir.’ He then repeats the proper verses and formulas, which have to be repeated at the end of every reading, embraces his tutor, and is allowed to withdraw.

A Brahman was not only commanded to pass his years of student life in the house of a Guru and to learn from his mouth all that a Brahman ought to know, he was also accused if he presumed to acquire sacred learning from written sources. In the Mahābhārata we read: ‘Those who sell the Vedas, and even those who write them, those also who defile them, they shall go to hell.’ Kumārila says: ‘That knowledge of the truth is worthless which has been acquired from the Veda, if the Veda has not been rightly comprehended, if it has been learned from writing, or has been received from a Sudra.’¹⁹

It was in this way that the Rig-veda grew out of the isolated songs and spells of the bards or singers of the first small clans of Aryan invaders of the north-west Panjab till it included, as it is to-day, 1,017 hymns and 11 supplementary hymns; 1,028 hymns in all, the supreme Scripture of the priests and thinkers of a continent.

From what has already been said it will be evident that no dates can be assigned to the origin of the hymns that make up the Vedas. Indeed it is necessary to go further and to say that there is not sufficient evidence to show with any precision when the hymns of the four Vedas were collected together and the Vedas themselves, as we have them were formed. Max Müller estimates that the hymns of Rig-veda were already much, as we now have them about 1500 B.C.²⁰ In his Hibbert Lectures he expresses the opinion that the collection was closed about 1000 B.C. The Brāhmanas may date from 800 to 600 B.C. The Sūtras may range from 600 to 200 B.C.²¹

Macdonell is content to say that the Vedic period perhaps begins as early as 1500 B.C.; that the kernel of Vedic tradition, as represented by the Rig-veda, has come down to us, with a high degree of fixity and remarkable care for verbal integrity, from a period which can scarcely be less remote than 1000 B.C.; and that the Samhitā text must have been as we have it about 600 B.C.²²

Dr. Maurice Bloomfield, who compiled the huge Concordance of the Vedas which was published in 1906 after mentioning that the Buddha died about 487 B.C. says:

Unquestionably a century or two must have passed between the conclusion of the Vedic period and the beginnings of Buddhism. Buddhist literature presupposes Brahmanical literature and religion in a stage of considerable advancement beyond the Vedas. We are, therefore, reasonably safe in saying that the real Vedic period was concluded about 700 B.C. We are further on safe ground in demanding a number of centuries for the much stratified language, literature, and religion of the Veda. But how many? It is as easy to imagine three as thirteen or twenty-three. Only one thing is certain. Vedic ideas are very old. I have noted the fact that the concept rat, ‘cosmic or universal order’ is found in cut and dried Iranian names in Western Asia as early as 1600 B.C. I am, for my part, and, I think I voice many scholars, now much more inclined to listen to an early date, say 2000 B.C., for the beginnings of Vedic literary production, and to a much earlier date for the beginnings of the institutions and religious concepts which the Veda has derived from those prehistoric times which cast their shadows forward into the records that are in our hands. Anyhow, we must not be beguiled by that kind of conservatism which merely salves the conscience into thinking that there is better proof for any later date, such as 1500, 1200, or 1000 B.C. rather than the earlier date of 2000 B.C. Once more, frankly, we do not know.²³

The following table will probably give as clear a view of the growth of Vedic literature, with an approximate idea of the time when it was created, as with our present knowledge it is possible to gain:

Growth of the Vedic Literature up to 600 B.C.

THE BRAHMANAS

Footnotes