English
It is a generally received opinion that the hymns of the tenth Mawf?ala are later in date than the others. A few hymns of the i?/g-veda, more especially some of the later hymns in the terfth Ma?i6?ala, appear to contain some vague, hazy conception of one Supreme Being ; but as a whole they are addressed directly to certain personifications of the powers of nature, which personifications were worshipped as deities having those physical powers under their control. From these powers the Vedic poets invoked prosperity on themselves and their flocks ; they extolled the prowess of these elemental powers in the struggles between light and darkness, warmth and cold, and they offered up joyous praise and thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and personal protection. Chief among the deities so praised and worshipped were Agni, Indra, and Surya. More hymns are addressed to Agni (Ignis), 'fire,' than to any other deity, and cliiefly in its sacrificial character, though it receives honour also for its domestic uses. Indra was honoured as the god of the atmosphere, who controlled the rains and the dcAv, so all-important to an agricultural people. Srir3'a, ' the sun,' was ' the source of heat,' but he shared this honour with AcTii, the sun bcincc considered a celestial fire. Amono: the most ancient of the myths was that of Dyaus-pitar, ' heavenly father,' the regent of the sky. Others Avere Aditi, ' the infinite expanse;' Varuwa {OhooLvog), 'the investing sky,' afterwards god of the waters ; Uslias {n^g), ' the dawn,' daughter of the sky ; the two Aswins, ' twin sons of the sun,' ever young and VEDA. 2>A7 handsome, and riding in a golden car as precursors of the dawn. Pr/thivT, ' the broad one,' as the earth was called, re- ceived honour as the mother of all beings. There were also the IMaruts or storm-gods, personifications of the wind, the especial foes of Vntra, the spirit of drought and ungenial weather, who was in constant conflict with Indra ; Rudra, the howling, furious god, who ruled the tempest and the storm ; Yam a, the god of the dead and judge of departed spirits, also received his meed of reverence ; last, though apparently not least in the estimation of the Aryan worshippers, was Soma, the personification of the fer- mented juice of the plant so named. This exhilarating liquid was alike acceptable to the gods and their worshij)pers, and many hymns are addressed to it as a deity. To each hymn of the i?ig-veda there is prefixed the name of the it/shi to whom it was revealed, as Yasish/ha, Yiswamitra, Bharadwaja, and many others ; and these sages are frequently spoken of as authors of the hymns bearing their names. It is quite unknown when the hymns were first committed to writing. They were transmitted orally from generation to generation, and continued to be so handed down even after they had been collected and arranged by Ivrish?za Dwaipayana, ' the arranger,' The oral teaching of the Yedas produced what are called the /S'akhas or ' schools ' of the Yedas. Different learned men, or bodies of men, became famous for their particular versions of the text, and taught these versions to their respective pupils. These difl'erent versions constitute the iSakhas ; they present, as might be expected, many verbal variations, but no very material discrepancies. " The poetry of the jR/g-veda," says Professor Cowell, " is remarkably deficient in that simplicity and natural pathos or sublimity which we naturally look for in the songs of an early period of civilisation. The language and style of most of the hymns is singularly artificial . . . Occasionally we meet with fine outbursts of poetry, especially in the hymns addressed to the dawn, but these are never long sustained ; and as a rule we find few grand similes or metaphors." A similar opinion is expressed by Professor AVilliams, who finds them " to abound more in puerile ideas than in striking thoughts and lofty conceptions." The Yajur or second Yeda is composed almost exclusively of 348 VEDA. hymns taken from the Rig, but it contains some prose passages which are new. Many of the hymns show considerable devia- tions from the original text of the Rig. These differences may perhaps be attributable either to an original difference of the traditional text or to modifications required by the ritualistic uses of the Yajur. The Yajur-veda is the priests' office-book, arranged in a liturgical form for the performance of sacrifices. As the manual of the priesthood, it became the great subject of study, and it has a great number of different /Sakhas or schools. It has two Sanhitas, one called the Taittiriya Sanhita, the other Yajasaneyi Sanhita, commonly kno^vn as the Black and AVhite Yajur, Of these, the former is the more ancient, and seems to have been known in the ihird century B.C. These Sanhitas contain upon the whole the same matter, but the arrangement is different. The "\AT-iite Yajur is the more orderly and sys- tematic, and it contains some texts which are not in the Black. The Sanhita of the Taittiriya or Black Yajur is arranged in 7 Kaw/as or books, 44 Prasnas or chapters, 651 Anuvakas or sections, and 219S KaTic^ikas or pieces, " fift}^ words as a rule forming a Ivr.TZ^ika." The Sanhita of the Vajasaneyi or IMiite Yajur is in 40 Adhyayas or chapters, 303 Anuvakas, and 1975 Kawf/ikas. How the separation into two Sanhitas arose has not been ascertained. It probably originated in a schism led by the sage Yajnawalkya ; but if it did not, it produced one, and the adherents of the two divisions were hostile to each other and quarrelled like men of different creeds. In later days a legend was invented to account for the division, which is thus given by the Yishmi and Yayu Pura?zas : The Yajur-veda, in twenty-seven branches (AS'akhas), was taught by Yaisampayana to his discipl(3 Yajnawalkya. Yaisampayana had the misfortune to kill his sister's child by an accidental kick, and he then called upon his disciples to perform the appropriate expiatory penance. Yajna- walkya refused to join the " miserable inefficient Brfdimans," and a quarrel ensued. Tlie teacher called upon the disciple to give up all that he had learnt from him ; and the disciple, with the same quick temper, vomited forth tb.e Yajur texts which he had accj[uired, and they fell upon the ground stained with blood. The other pupils were turned into partridges (Tittiri), and they picked up the disgorged texts ; hence the part of the Veda VEDA. 349 wliicli was thus acqiiircd was called Taittiiiya and Black. Yajnawalkya sorrowfully departed, and by the performance of severe penances induced the Sun to impart to him those Yajur texts which his master had not possessed. The Sun then assumed the form of a horse (Yajin), and communicated to him the desired texts. The priests of this portion of the Veda were called Yajins, while the Sanhita itself was called Yajasaneyi, and also AYliite (or bright), because it was revealed by the sun. The statement that Yajnawalkya received this Yeda from the sun is, however, earlier than the Pura?ms, for it is mentioned by the grammarian Katyayana. A more reasonable and intelligible explanation is, that Yajasaneyi is a patronymic of Yajnawalkya, the offspring of Yiijasani, and that Taittirlya is derived from Tittiri, the name of a pupil of Yaska's. Weber, the man best acquainted with this Yeda, says, " However absurd this legend (of the PuraTias) may be, a certain amount of sense lurks beneath its surface. The Black Yajur is, in fact, a motley undigested jumble of different pieces ; and I am myself more inclined to derive the name Taittirlya from the variegated partridge (Tittiri) than from the itislii Tittiri." Goldstlicker's view is, that the " motley character of the Black Yajur-veda arises from the cir- cumstance that the distinction between the Mantra and Brah- ma?za portions is not so clearly established in it as in the other Yedas, hymns and matter properly belonging to the Brahma?ias being there intermixed. This defect is remedied in the Wliite Yajur-veda, and it points, therefore, to a period when the mate- rial of the old Yajur was brought into a system consonant with prevalent theories, literary and ritualistic." The Sama-veda Sanhita is wholly metrical. It contains 1549 verses, only seventy-eight of which have not been traced to the -Rig-veda.