In the Rig Veda occur hymns of an entirely worldly character, the lament of a gambler, a humorous description of frogs croaking like priests, a funny picture of contemporary morals [describing how every one lusts after wealth], and so forth. From these alone it becomes evident that the ritualistic view must be regarded as one somewhat exaggerated. But if the liturgical extremist appears to have stepped a little beyond the boundary of probability, he yet in daring remains far behind Bergaigne's disciple Regnaud, who has a mystical 'system,' which is, indeed, the outcome of Bergaigne's great work, though it is very improbable that the latter would have looked with favor upon his follower's results. In Le Rig Veda [Paris, 1892] Paul Regnaud, emphasizing again the connection between the liturgy and the hymns, refers every word of the Rig Veda to the sacrifice in its simplest form, the oblation. According to this author the Hindus had forgotten the meaning of their commonest words, or consistently employed them in their hymns in a meaning different to that in ordinary use. The very word for god, deva [deus], no longer means the 'shining one' [the god], but the 'burning oblation'; the common word for mountain, giri also means oblation, and so on. This is Bergaigne's allegorical mysticism run mad.
At such perversion of reasonable criticism is the exegesis of the Veda arrived in one direction. But in another it is gone astray no less, as misdirected by its clever German leader. In three volumes[21] Brunnhofer has endeavored to prove that far from being a Brahmanic product, the Rig Veda is not even the work of Hindus; that it was composed near the Caspian Sea long before the Aryans descended into India. Brunnhofer's books are a mine of ingenious conjectures, as suggestive in detail as on the whole they are unconvincing. His fundamental error is the fancy that names and ideas which might be Iranian or Turanian would prove, if such they really could be shown to be, that the work in which they are contained must be Iranian or Turanian. He relies in great measure on passages that always have been thought to be late, either whole late hymns or tags added to old hymns, and on the most daring changes in the text, changes which he makes in order to prove his hypothesis, although there is no necessity for making them. The truth that underlies Brunnhofer's extravagance is that there are foreign names in the Rig Veda, and this is all that he has proved thus far.
In regard to the relation between the Veda and the Avesta the difference of views is too individual to have formed systems of interpretation on that basis alone. Every competent scholar recognizes a close affinity between the Iranian Yima and the Hindu Yama, between the soma-cult and the haoma-cult, but in how far the thoughts and forms that have clustered about one development are to be compared with those of the other there is no general agreement and there can be none. The usual practice, however, is to call the Iranian Yima, haoma, etc., to one's aid if they subserve one's own view of Yama, soma, and other Hindu parallels, and to discard analogous features as an independent growth if they do not. This procedure is based as well on the conditions of the problem as on the conditions of human judgment, and must not be criticized too severely; for in fact the two religions here and there touch each other so nearly that to deny a relation between them is impossible, while in detail they diverge so widely that it is always questionable whether a coincidence of ritual or belief be accidental or imply historical connection.
It is scarcely advisable in a concise review of several religions to enter upon detailed criticism of the methods of interpretation that affect for the most part only the earliest of them. But on one point, the reciprocal relations between the Vedic and Brahmanic periods, it is necessary to say a few words. Why is it that well-informed Vedic scholars differ so widely in regard to the ritualistic share in the making of the Veda? Because the extremists on either side in formulating the principles of their system forget a fact that probably no one of them if questioned would fail to acknowledge. The Rig Veda is not a homogeneous whole. It is a work which successive generations have produced, and in which are represented different views, of local or sectarian origin; while the hymns from a literary point of view are of varying value. The latter is a fact which has been ignored frequently, but it is more important than any other. For one has almost no criteria, with which to discover whether the hymns precede or follow the ritual, other than the linguistic posteriority of the ritualistic literature, and the knowledge that there were priests with a ritual when some of the hymns were composed. The bare fact that hymns are found rubricated in the later literature is surely no reason for believing that such hymns were made for the ritual. Now while it can be shown that a large number of hymns are formal, conventional, and mechanical in expression, and while it may be argued with plausibility that these were composed to serve the purpose of an established cult, this is very far from being the case with many which, on other grounds, may be supposed to belong severally to the older and later part of the Rig Veda. Yet does the new school, in estimating the hymns, never admit this. The poems always are spoken of as 'sacerdotal', ritualistic, without the slightest attempt to see whether this be true of all or of some alone. We claim that it is not historical, it is not judicious from a literary point of view, to fling indiscriminately together the hymns that are evidently ritualistic and those of other value; for, finally, it is a sober literary judgment that is the court of appeals in regard to whether poetry be poetry or not. Now let one take a hymn containing, to make it an unexceptionable example, nothing very profound or very beautiful. It is this well-known
HYMN TO THE SUN (Rig Veda, I. 50).
Aloft this all-wise[22] shining god
His beams of light are bearing now,
That every one the sun may see.
Apart, as were they thieves, yon stars,
Together with the night[23], withdraw
Before the sun, who seeth all.
His beams of light have been beheld
Afar, among [all] creatures; rays
Splendid as were they [blazing] fires,
Impetuous-swift, beheld of all,
Of light the maker, thou, O Sun,
Thou all the gleaming [sky] illum'st.
Before the folk of shining gods
Thou risest up, and men before,
'Fore all—to be as light beheld;