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There can be little doubt, for instance, that the 90th hymn^ of the lOth book, a hymn which is likewise found in the 31s^ * A very careful discussion on this hymn, together with its text, translation, various readings and notes, is to be found in I^^* John Muir*8 " Original Sanskrit Texts/ pp. 6 — 11. DATE OF THE CHHAHDAS PEBIOD. 571 book of the Ydjasaneyi-sanhitft, and in the 19th book of the Atharva-veda, is modern both in its character and in its diction. It is full of allusions to the sacrificial ceremonials, it uses technical philoso- phical terms, it mentions the three seasons in the order of Yasanta, spring, Grishma, summer, and Sarad, autumn ; it contains the only passage in the Rig-veda where the four castes are enumerated. The evidence of language for the modem date of this composition is equally strong. Grtshma, for instance, the name for the hot season, does not occur in any other hymn of the Rig-veda; and Yasanta also, the name of spring, does not belong to the earliest vocabulary of the Yedic poets. It occurs but once more in the Rig-veda x. 161. 4., in a passage where the three seasons are mentioned in the order of !§arad, autumn, Hemanta, winter, and Yasanta, spring. But in spite of all the indications of a modern date, this hymn, if our argument holds good, must have existed before the beginning of the Brd^hmana period. I see no possibility how we could account for the allusions to it which occur in the Brd^hmanas, or for its presence in the Sanhit&s of the Yajesaneyins and Atharvans, unless we admit that this poem formed part of the final collection of the Rig-veda-sanhitH, the work of the Mantra period. There are no traces anywhere of hymns having been added after that collection was closed, except in the case of the Khilas, and no secret is ever made as to their spurious character. Oriental scholars are frequently suspected of a desire to make the literature of the eastern nations appear more ancient than it is. As to myself, I can truly say that nothing would be to me a more welcome discovery, nothing would remove 55d FHILOSOraiCAL HTIINS. Still fluid state. They next appear as appellatives, not yet as proper names ; they are organic, not yet broken and smoothed down. Nor can we compare that earlier, lower, and more savage phase of thought which we find in the Veda, with what we know of reaUy barbarous tribes, such as the Negroes of Africa or the Indians of America. For, however inferior to the Greeks of Homer and the Jews of Moses, the Aryas of the Seven Rivers are far above those races, and had long crossed the bounds of an uq- conscious barbarism, when they worshipped Dyaos and the other bright gods of nature. Let us consider but a single point. We have accustomed ourselves to regard a belief in the unity of God as one of the last stages to which the Greek mind ascended from the depths of a polytheistic faith. The one unknown God was the final result which the pupils of Plato and Aristotle had arrived at when they came to listen to the straoge teaching of St. Paul at Athens. But how can we tell that the course of thought was the same in India? By what right do we mark all hymns as modern in which the idea of one God breaks through the clouds of a polytheistic phraseology ? The belief in a Supreme God, in a God above all gods, may in the abstract seem later than the belief in many gods. Yet let one poet but once perceive how he is drawn towards the Divine by the same feelings that draw him towards his father, let such a poet in his simple prayer but once utter, though it be thoughtlessly, the words, " My father," and the dreary desert through which philosophy marches step by step, is crossed at a single bound. We must not compare the Aryan and the Semitic races. Whereas the Semitic nations relapsed THE FHILOSOPHT OF CBEATION. 559 from time to time into polytheism, the Aryans of India seem to have relapsed into Monotheism. In both cases these changes were not the rosult of a gradual and regular progress, but of individual impulses and peculiar influences. I do not think, therefore, that the mere occurrence of monotheistic ideas, and of other large philosophical conceptions, is sufficient to stamp any class of hymns as of modem date. A decided preponderance of such ideas, coupled with other indications in the character of the lan- guage, might make us hesitate before we used such as witnesses for the Chhandas period. But there is a monotheism that precedes the polytheism of the Veda, and even in the invocations of their innumer- able gods the remembrance of a Grod, one and infinite, breaks through the mist of an idolatrous phraseology, like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds. There is a hymn of peculiar interest in the tenth Mandala, full of ideas which to many would seem to necessitate the admission of a long antecedent period of philosophical thought. There we find the conception of a beginning of all things, and of a state previous even to all existence. " Nothing that is, was then," the poet says; and he adds, with a boldness matched only by the Eleatic thinkers of Greece, or by Hegel's philosophy, *' even what is not (to ft^ ov), did not exist then." lie then proceeds to deny the existence of the sky and of the firmament, and yet, unable to bear the idea of an unlimited notliing, he exclaims, " What was it that hid or covered the existing ? " Thus driven on, and asking two questions at once, with a rapidity of thought which the Greek and the Sanskrit languages only can follow, he says, ^^ What was the refuge of what?" After this metaphysical flight. 574 APPKKDIX. f^iTT 5^^ ^nrer Md^^4fl^ ^^n^i fir ^ ?ra ftwf^ t%^ w^ f^ ^:i 1 Mitlkshari J. p. 6^ 1. 6. h&s THE PHILOSOPHY OF CREATION. 561 writer would have filled it out. The true poet, how- ever, says but a single word, and, at his spell, pictures arise within our own mind, full of a reality beyond the reach of any art. But now this One had to be represented as grow- ing— as entering into reality — and here again nature must supply a similitude to the poet. As yet, the real world existed only as a germ, hidden in a husky shell ; now, the poet represents the one substance as borne into life by its own innate heat. The beginning of the world was conceived like the spring of nature ; one miracle was explained by another. But, even then, this Being, or this nature, as conceived by the poet, was only an unconscious substance, without will and without change. The question how there was generation in nature, was still unanswered! Another miracle had to be appealed to, in order to explain the conscious act of creation : this miracle was Love, as perceived in the heart of men. " Then first came love upon it," the poet continues, and he defines love, not only as a natural, but as a mental impulse. Though he cannot say what love is, yet he knows that all will recognise what he means by love, — a power which arises from the unsearchable depths of our nature, — making us feel our own incompleteness, and draw- ing us, half-conscious, half-unconscious, towards that far off and desired something, through which alone our life seems to become a reality. This is the analogy which was wanted to explain the life of nature, which he knew was more than mere existence. The One Being which the poet had postulated was neither self-sufficient nor dead: a desire fell upon it, — a spring of life, manifested in growth of every kind. After the manifestation of this desire or will, all o o 576 AFPBin>ix. % ^TffVf?TT IT^S^ W W^ iWf?t T'T nm ^ 7fT9n WT 'HIT TfSt 'T^ft 'WT T ?[?rr ^ififV ^ APFEMDIX. 577 wni -Rnm ^Nt^ ^w^ ^ miH^^^a m^^ ^n %^i€ fl^'ii mi^ Trer ^<< ^tI ?f5 ^ Q 3 578 AFPBNDIX. ' The ^nkh&jana-s&tras place the verses of Indra in a different order : 1, 3, 4, 2, 5, and add a sixth verse at the end. APPENDIX. 679 4 Q 4 580 AFFKHDIX. PWf?*^ IT^I ^^^ ^ Wl(^ ^^ ^^K ^J^ WT ^ ?^ 'rat ii?i ??T# deest deejfc ¥ 7!^7gwT w^ unhrqf ^s^ ^ ^^ <uiiifjmniK>^* T Kin ^ 1^ ^ deest <iHii Kipinj ^^^T^ fl*ifl*i(Ji|^ifti| g^ tnj- APFEMDUC 581 deest- r WT fi^'^'esi>*nf^ TWIT 'vnc ^ ^ 'J W(^\ m 582 APFBMOIX. fi^<i^<ii<deifl "hrY rfi^ 'rot ^wlihw t?$w^i fi^ 5 ^ir — APPENDIX. 583 ^ ^TTOT- frnirni Tt( H*lfl^i M^Mm iRfitsT Tf^?ifinr ^rreii^^ii fHjf^ ^"^irii^^ ^swui: ^i^rrofv- _f%WRTT^ ^^rfnt^TT^f^: ^^- 584 AFFBMOIX. . ^TOW ^15 ^- H: n APPENDIX.