English
But I hope I shall be able to prove that there exist in that large mass of literature which belongs to the Vedic age, clear traces of an original historical articulation ; and that it is possible to re* store something like chronological continuity in the four periods of the Vedic literature. If this can be achieved, if we can discover different classes of lite* rary works, and vindicate to them something of a truly historical character, the reproach that there is nothing historical to be found in India will be removed, as far as the peculiar nature of that litera^ ture allows. The modem literature of India, though not yet grouped in chronological order, will find in the lite- AJrriQUlTT OP THE VEDA. 65 rature of the Yedic age something like a past, some testimony to prove that it did not spring up in a day, but clings by its roots to the earliest strata of Indian thought. The Laws of the M&navas, though no longer the composition of a primeval sage, will at least be safe against the charge of being the invention of some unemployed Indian lawgiver. Plays like l^akuntala and Urva^i, though no longer regarded as the productions of a Periclean age, will be classed among the productions of what may properly be called the Alexandrian period of Sanskrit literature. But whatever we may have to surrender with regard to the antiquity claimed by these and other Sanskrit works, that portion of the literature of India which alone can claim a place in the history of the world, and which alone can command the attention of those who survey the summits of human intellect, not only in the East but over the whole civilised world, will, we hope, for the future, be safe against the doubts which I myself have shared for many years. It is difficult, no doubt, to believe that the most ancient literary work of the Aryan race,- a work more ancient than the Zenda vesta and Homer, should, after a lapse of at least three thousand years, have been discovered, and for the first time published in its entirety, not in one of the Parishads on the borders of the Ganges, but in one of the colleges of an English University. It is difficult to believe that sufficient MSS. should have been preserved, in spite of the perishable nature of the material on which they are written, to enable an editor to publish the collection of the Vedic hymns in exactly that form in which they existed at least 800 years before the Christian era ; and, still more, that this collection, which was completed at the time F 66 ANTIQTJITT OF THE VEDA. of Lycurgus, should contain the poetical relics of a pre-Homeric age ; an age in which the names of the Greek gods and heroes had not yet lost their ori^nal sense, and in which the simple worship of the Divine powers of nature was not yet supplanted by a worship of personal gods. It is difficult to believe this ; and we have a right to be sceptical. But it is likewise our duty to inquire into the value of what has been preserved for us in so extraordinary a manner, and to extract from it those lessons which the study of man- kind was intended to teach to man. 67 yXO X^ fg.^^ ^TJRE- ^ t^ ^° features co-^- to Tet^.V jeA' Si^ Bft^*" ^jCC*' \ve V^ straTvg^ ^o*. .V^<^' .Hi are to roi ►tA ft-ftO ^^^.^!cS-^^ viv o t.t0 ^e^ .1^' iter vo. ^^a.v €=^"^<^^> , vcQ.\.taX^ "vt. ^ ' \,Vc\v ^. ^fttv5 °^ i<xi=^ V<^^' ,t''^* ;^^\tia^'?r.6t^*' ?^^^ Utfte^- ^w* Vtv 68 METRE. non-Vedic poetry, we must attend more closely to the metre. Several Vedic metres have been imitated by later poets, but there are metres which never occur in Vedic works, and which may be used as criteria for distinguishing ancient from more modem poetry. That difference of metre should form a broad line of demarcation between two periods of literature, is not at all without an analogy in the literary history of other nations, particularly in older times. If once a new form of metre begins to grow popular by the influence of a poet who succeeds in collecting a school of other poets around him, this new mode of utterance is very apt to supersede the other more ancient forms altogether. People become accustomed to the new rhythm sometimes to such a degree, that they lose entirely the taste for their old poetry on account of its obsolete measure. No poet, therefore, who writes for the people, would think of employing those old- fashioned metres; and we find that early popular poems have had to be transfused into modem verse in order to make them generally readable once more. Now it seems that the regular and continuous Anushtubh-Sloka is a metre unknown during the Vedic age, and every work written in it may at once be put down as post- Vedic. It is no valid objection that this epic l^loka occurs also in Vedic hymns, that Anushtubh verses are frequently quoted in the Br&h- manas, and that in some of the Si^tras the Anushtubh* 61oka occurs intermixed with Trishtubhs, and is used for the purpose of recapitulating^ what had been explained before in prose. For it is only the uniform 1 Sangraha-^lokas. Cf. Weber, Indische Studien, i. p. 47. METRE. . 69 employment of that metre ^ which constitutes the characteristic mark of a new period of literature. Thus rhyme occasionally occurs in English poetry before the Norman period ; yet, when we find whole poems written in rhyme and without the old Teutonic system of alliteration, we are sure that they cannot have been composed in an Ante-Norman period. The elegiac measure seems to have been used before Callinus ; yet Callinus and Archilochus are always mentioned as the inventors of it: — that is, they were the first to sanction the uniform employment of this metre for entire poetical compositions. Hence no elegiac poem can be previous to the close of the 8th century b.c. The same applies to the iambus, the invention of which is commonly ascribed to Archilochus ; although iambics occur interspersed in the Margites, a poem ascribed to Homer by no less an authority than Aristotle.^ In the history of German literature we have several instances where ^ It is remarkable that Iq Panini also, the word Sloka is always used in opposition to Vedic literature (P&n. iv. 1. 66., iv. 3. 103. 1., iv. 3. 107.). Slokasy even if ascribed bj Indian tradition to the same author, who is considered as the ^ishi of Vedic hymns or Brahmanas, are quoted by a name different from that of his other works. The hymns or Brahmanas ascribed to Katha, for instance, are always to be quoted as '* Kath&h ^ {pi irtpX KarBov) ; an expression which could never apply to poetical compositions ascribed to the same Katha, if written in Slokas. Verses written in this modem style of poetry must be quoted as " Eathic Slokas*' (Kathah ^lokah). The Brahmana promulgated by l^ittiri, and kept up in the tradition of the Taittiriyas, is quoted by the name of " the Taittinyas," but 6lokas composed by Tittiri are never included under this title. Pan. ii. 4. 21. Valmiki-dlokas are mentioned. ^ See Mure's Critical History, voL ill. ch. i. r 3 70 THE FOUB PERIODS OF VEDIC LITERA.TURB. poems of the 12th century * had to be recast as early as the 13th, on account of their metre and language ; which, during this period of rapid transition, had already become obsolete and unreadable. Excluding, then, from the Vedic period the Ma- h&bh&rata, R4mftyana, Manu, the Pur&nas, and all the j^ftstras and Dar6anas, we have now to see what remains of literary works belonging to the Yedic age. There are in that age four distinct periods, which can be established with sufficient evidence. They may be called the Chhandas period^ Mantra period^ Brdhmana period^ and Sdtra period^ according to the general form of the literary productions which give to each of them its peculiar historical character. In order to prove that these four periods follow each other in historical order, it is necessary to show that the composition of S&tra works presupposes the existence of a Br&hmana literature; that the Br&hmana literature again is only possible with the presupposition of a Mantra literature ; and lastly, that the form in which we possess the Mantra literature presupposes a period of Vedic history preceding the collection and final arrangement of the ancient Mantras or hymns. 1 For instance, ** Beinhard the Fox,** an old High-Gkrman poem of the ISth century, is a new edition of the same poem written in the 12th century, of which fragments have been found by Grimm.