English
An exact division between the ancient and the modern por- tions of the Rig-veda will probably be impossible even after these ancient relics have been studied with a much more searching accuracy than hi- therto. The language which might be expected to contain the safest indications of the more ancient or more modem date of certain hymns, has, owing to the influence of oral tradition, assumed an uniformity which baffles the most careful analysis. Nor would it be safe to trust to our preconceived notions as to the peculiar character of genuine and of artificial poetry. Some of the very latest poets may have been endowed with a truly poetical genius, when the originality and freshness of their thoughts would seem to place them in a better age.' Nor is the fact that the ancient poets enunciate thoughts entirely their own, and with the full consciousness that what they say has never been said before, sufficient to give to all their productions so deep a stamp of truth and faith that our weakened eyes should always discern it. But although we may hesitate about single hymns, whether they are the productions of ancient or modern Rishis, we cannot hesitate as to the ge- neral fact that the ten books of the Rig-veda at the time they were finally collected, comprised the poetry of two different periods. This is the only important point for our purpose. We ascribe the later poets of the Veda to the Mantra period, so that we comprise within that period two apparently distinct, yet, in reality, very cognate tendencies. We suppose that the THE INTRODUCTION OF WRITING. 497 Mantra period was an age of Epigonoi, occupied at first in imitating the works of their fathers, and to- wards the end engaged in the more useful employment of collecting all that was within reach, modern as well as ancient, and handing it down to the careful guardianship of later generations. Two hundred years will not be too long a time for the gradual pro- gress of this work. There are several generations of modem poets, and probably two classes of collectors to be accommodated, and the work of the last col- lectors, the collectors of the Mandalas, could not have commenced before the last line of every poem which now forms part of the ten Mandalas was written. I therefore fix the probable chronological limits of the Mantra period between 800 and 1000 B.C. Before we leave the Mantra period there is one ques- tion which, if it cannot be fully answered, requires at least to be carefully discussed. Was the collection of the ten books of Vedic hymns the work of persons cognisant of the art of writing or not? Were the 1017 hymns of the Rig-veda, after they had been gathered into one body, preserved by memory or on paper ? We can hardly expect to find an answer to this question in the hymns themselves. Most persons acquainted with the history of popular poetry among the principal nations of antiquity would be ready to admit that the original composition and preservation of truly national poetry were everywhere due to the unaided efforts of memory. Where writing is known, it is almost impossible to compose a thousand hymns without bringing in some such words as, writing, read- ing, paper, or pen. Yet there is not one single allusion in these hymns to anything connected with writing. KK 498 THE INTRODUCTION OF WRITING. Let US consider the Old Testament. The Ten Commandments were not only proclaimed by the voice of God, but Moses " went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand : the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written. And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables." (Exodus xxxii. 15, 16.) Here we can have no doubt that the author of the Book of Exodus, and the people to whom it was addressed, were acqudnted with the art of writing. Again we read (Exodus xxiv. 7.), that " Moses took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people ;" and (Exodus XXV. 16.), the Lord commanded Moses, saying, "Thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee." The covenant here spoken of must have existed as a book, or, at least, in some tangible form. A nation so early acquainted with letters and books as the Jews would naturally employ some of the terms connected with writing in a metaphorical sense. Thus we read in the Psalms (Ivi. 8.), " Put thou my tears into thy bottle : are they not in thy book ? ^ Ixix. 28. ** Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous." xl. 7. "Then said I, Lo I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me." xlv. 1. " My tongue is the pen of a ready writer." In the Book of Job (xix. 23.), we actually read, " Oh that my words were now written ! oh that they were printed in a book ! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever ! " " Printed " here can only mean " written." Proverbs iii. 3. " Write them upon the table of thine heart." THE INTRODUCTION OF WRITING. 499 In the Homeric poems, on the contrary, where the whole Grecian life lies before us in marvellous com- pleteness and distinctness, there is not a single men* tion of writing. The ktrypa en}ju.€ui, carried by Belle- rophon instead of a letter, are the best proof that, even for such purposes, not to speak of literary com- position, the use of letters was unknown to the Homeric age. The art of writing, when it is not only applied to short inscriptions but to literature, forms such a complete revolution in the history of a nation, and in all the relations of society, both civil and political, that, in any class of ancient literature, the total absence of any allusion to writing, may safely be supposed to prove the absence of the art at the time when that literature arose. We know the complete regeneration of modem Europe which was wrought by the invention of printing. Every page of the literature of the sixteenth century, every pamphlet or fly-sheet of the Reformation, tells us that printing had been invented. The discovery of writing, and more especially the application of writing to literary purposes, was a discoveiy infi- nitely more important than that of printing. And yet we are asked to believe that Homer has hidden his light under a bushel, and erased every expression connected with writing from his poetical dictionary ! But though it is certain that the Homeric poets did not write, or, if we are to adopt the legendary lan- guage of certain critics, though it is certain that blind Homer did not keep a private secretary, there is no doubt that, at the time of Peisistratos, when the final collection of the Homeric poems took place, this collection was a collection of written poems. Peisi- stratos possessed a large library, and, though books K K 9. 500 THE INTRODUCTION OF WRITING. were not so common in his time as they were in the time of Alcibiades, when every schoolmaster had his lliad^, yet, ever since the importation of paper into Greece, writing was a common acquirement of the educated classes of Greeks. The whole civilisation of Greece, and the rapid growth of Greek literature, has been ascribed to the free trade between Egypt and Greece, beginning with the Saidic dynasty.* Greece imported all its paper from Egypt ; and with- out paper no Greek literature would have been pos- sible. The skins of animals were too rare, and their preparation too expensive, to permit the growth of a popular literature. Herodotus mentions it as a pe- culiarity of the barbarians, that at his time some of them still wrote on skins only. Paper (papjn'us or byblus) was evidently to Greece what linen paper was to Europe in the middle ages.^ Now, if we look for any similar traces in the his- tory of Indian literature, our search is completely disappointed. There is no mention of writing- materials, whether paper, bark, or skins, at the time when the Indian Diaskeuasts collected the songs of their Rishis ; nor is there any allusion to writing during the whole of the Br&hmana period. This up- sets the common theories about the origin of prose literature. According to Wolf*, prose composition is a safe sign of a written literature. It is not so in * Plutarch, Alcibiades, c. vii. * See Grote, History of Greece, ii. p. 201. ' Plin. Hist. Nat. xiii. 13. § 27. : " Cum chart® usu maxime ha- manitas vitfle constat et memoria.