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It no longer expresses the fresh burst of devotion, as of poetry, poured forth on the feeling into song ; but it mutters ritual as a sort of charm, or formal in- cantation. Depend upon it, the Vydsa (arranger) who arranged all such diverse elements under the head of the four Vedas, must have been not one man, but many ; or else must be of a date far more recent than the hymns of the Rig- Veda. Good scholars think, they can even trace changes of place indicated in the hymns, as the Aryan race pushed forward its conquests into India. Hence they conclude, that the earlier kings of the solar race did not reign in Oude, but more to the North-west. It is sufficient for my purpose to make you notice, that the collection of books, which you call the Vedas, is not the work of a day, and not primeval. Nor do I ask you to believe this on my authority, but on that of your sacred books, which proclaim this of themselves. Ask the hymns of the Rig- Veda to tell you, if their authors were not older than those who altered them some- what into the kindred hymns of the Yajdr- Vedas, and then of the S&ma, and still later, of the Atharvan. Ask them especially, whether they lived in the same land, or knew the same customs and laws, as either the legislator Manu, or the bards of the Mahdbhdrata. " If we continue this sort of investigation, the question arises, where are we to place the great Epic poems ? The Mah&bhdrata, again, has its Vy&sa ; but it must be written later than the war it celebrates, and therefore much within twelve centuries of the Christian era. Again, it bears traces of having been traditionally recited. It has vast episodes of religious speculation and cos- mogony ; and it is exceedingly difficult to fancy that the Bhaga- vadgita was explained by Crishna to Arjuna in the intervals of a battle. This seems rather to be a highly imaginative mode of introducing in poetry some religious speculation. Nor is it easy to say, how far such introduction of matter comparatively modem * Laeaen and Weber, as before. EPIC POEMS. 277 may have been carried. But the narrative, or heroic portion of the poem, speaks a different spirit from that of the Vedas. It is not shepherd or priest hymning the genial influences of nature, but is the warrior caste putting forth their strength, and disputing in its consciousness the palm of priority with the intellect of the Brahman. Or rather, perhaps, we see the kings imwillingly accepting a yoke their fathers had not known, but which the Brahmans fastened first on their subjects, and then on themselves. The struggle of Viswamitra, as the soldier king, with Vasishtha, the ascetic Brahman, shews us Indian society fermenting, and not yet settled in its sad immobility of form. Yet, as a whole, the Mah^bharata is thought by good judges* to be a more rounded composition, and to betray a greater de- velopment of the Brahmanical system than the older Bdm^ yana. The older poem is a simpler narrative of a legendary conquest, and has more of popular life, with signs of having been sung at feasts and sacrifices. You would tell me, it should be traced up to Valmlki, who is called contemporary with R^a; but the interval of time must have been pretty long, for imagi- nation to have magnified the heroes of the poem into a size which betokens the dimness of distance. When men are de- scribed as of superhuman size and prowess, and their exploits as the work of enchantment, and their enemies as now demons and now monkeys, this does not mean that the things were literally so, but that the describer sees them through a haze of distance and imagination. Speaking generally, however, we may say that the two great Epic Poems attest the growth of the Hindti mind out of a state in which the forces of Nature exercised a paramount influence over life, into one which had a fuller consciousness of himian activity, and a series of struggles and developments, yet with the genius of the older time mould- ing the new. * There u some discrepance between the judgments of Lassen and Weber as to the two poems : but it is allowed that the Mah^bh^rata contains materials of rery different ages, with more of formal speculation than the B^nUyana and less of popular legend. 278 CODE OF MANU. " Something perhaps analogous may be said of the laws of Manu. It is very difficult to believe as literally correct, what you seemed to say of these laws having been given to the father of the human race, (and that too in a former Manwantara,) unless you meant it in a parable, that God wrote on the heart of man- kind principles which should work themselves out into such a form. But as the book now stands, it bears clear marks of hav- ing been compiled much later than three out of the four Vedas. Its scene is in proper India, yet in the Northern part, with little knowledge of the Southern. The society which it sketches in the form of precept is more formally developed than that of the hymns. It shews more of king, and priest, and city, and fixed occupation. The entire system of caste has taken absolute form. You see also how this arose. Partly it depends on race ; for the two higher castes, and in a less degree the third, are A'ryas, as having sprung chieBy from the dominant invaders of India. The fourth consists of Sddras, their name being that of an in- digenous tribe, which is described in the Mah^bhdrata as dark and small, and clothed in cotton. Again, the men below the four castes are Chdnddlas, and this seems the name of an in- digenous race, whom the Greek geographer Ptolemy* places near the Bhils of modem times. Partly again, caste comes of religious distinctions, for the upper castes are described as twice-homy or as having been initiated in religious privileges, and the charac- teristic of Brahmans is, that they know the Vedas f. Perhaps in the legislator's injunctions to marry only in certain families there is, joined with moral precaution, something of antipathy of race or sect. More distinctly, we see in the honours which kings are directed to confer on the Brahmans, the full-grown power of the religious caste. Whereas, an earlier stage in its growth is rather indicated in the R&m^yana by the bounty of * Zi^/KM* KdydoXM' *vXXtra*. Ptol. vil. i. 61—66 ; VI. 10 — 3 ; Manu, X. 15 ; Lassen, B. n. pp. 799^-820. t The passages referred to are found in Manu, B. i. 23, 31, 88 ; 11. 17, 38, 6a, 149; in. 145; vn. 37—136; VIII. no; ix. 87; x. i— 16, 20, 45—108; xi. 51—60, 78, 85, 265, 1^ ; V. 30—39. SA'NKHYA SPECULATION. 279 Dasaratha to the same persons, and by their mode of receiving it. Again, the Deities of Manu are neither for the most part the Vedic, nor yet those of the Pur^nas. He speaks comparatively little of all the elementary agencies, which make the bulk of the eld^ divinities, but more of Nar&yana or of Brahm^, who in the later portions of the Vedas is by a personifying generalisation made the Supreme Kuler ; nor does he mention Vishnu, either in the subordinate sense of the Vedas, or in the magnified form of later times; nor yet Siva, who, at the time of the earlier Bauddha Sdtras, was held in honour ; still less the later deifica- tions or incarnations, such as those of B^ma and Crishna, which are the favourites of the Puranas. If now you consider that such change of language is the mirror of changes in society, which must have been long in coming about, you will understand why the laws of Manu belong to a period long after the earliest Vedic hymns, though before the rise of Buddhism. "Our firiend Saddnanda is so critical, that he will readily enter into what I will ofier conjecturally about Capila. There is in the Sdnkhya philosophy an acknowledgment of the might of Nature, which might well enough spring out of the Vedic worship. But the abstract tone of the philosopher's speculation, and his way of reducing the deities into natural forces, is imlike the simple fervour of the old devotional song. We must blame Capila for not having substituted any clear conception of an overruling mind; but we must acknowledge he had reason for taking away that worship of blind elements which the older faith involved. Perhaps it was his mission, as a rationalist, to work out freedom for the human mind from undue subjection either to the material world, or to that elaborate system of the religious caste, which had become a superstition to some, and a policy to others.