5. When Maruts, urging on the cloud, for the sake of (providing) food, you have yoked the deer to your chariots, the drops fall from the radiant (sun), and moisten the earth, like a hide, with water!
6. Let your quick-paced smooth-gliding coursers bear you (hither), and, moving swiftly, come with your hands filled with good things: sit, Maruts, upon the broad seat of sacred grass, and regale yourselves with the sweet sacrificial food!
7. Confiding in their own strength, they have increased in (power); they have attained heaven by their greatness, and have made (for themselves) a spacious abode: may they, for[166] whom Vishnu defends (the sacrifice) that bestows all desires and confers delight, come (quickly) like birds, and sit down upon the pleasant and sacred grass!
8. Like heroes, like combatants, like men anxious for food, the swift-moving (Maruts) have engaged in battles: all beings fear the Maruts, who are the leaders (of the rain), and awful of aspect, like princes!
9. Indra wields the well-made, golden, many-bladed thunderbolt, which the skilful Twashtri has framed for him, that he may achieve great exploits in war. He has slain Vritra, and sent forth an ocean of water!
10. By their power, they bore the well aloft, and clove asunder the mountain that obstructed their path: the munificent Maruts, blowing upon their pipe, have conferred, when exhilarated by the soma juice, desirable (gifts upon the sacrificer)!
11. They brought the crooked well to the place (where the Muni was), and sprinkled the water upon the thirsty Gotama: the variously-radiant (Maruts) come to his succour, gratifying the desire of the sage with life-sustaining waters!
12. Whatever blessings (are diffused) through the three worlds, and are in your gift, do you bestow upon the donor (of the libation), who addresses you with praise; bestow them, also, Maruts, upon us, and grant us, bestowers of all good, riches, whence springs prosperity!
If we investigate the antiquity of these hymns we shall find no definite and unimpeachable date. Their epoch is assigned on the score of internal evidence. The language is so much more archaic than that of the Institutes, and the mythology so much simpler; whilst the Institutes themselves are similarly circumstanced in respect[167] to the Epics. Fixing these at about 200, B.C.; we allow so many centuries for the archaisms of Menu, and so many more for those of the Vedas. For the whole, eleven hundred has not been thought too little, which places the Vedas in the fourteenth century, B.C., and makes them the earliest, or nearly the earliest records in the world.
It is clear that this is but an approximation, and, although all inquirers admit that creeds, languages, and social conditions present the phenomena of growth, the opinions as to the rate of such growths are varied, and none of much value. This is because the particular induction required for the formation of anything better than a mere impression has yet to be undertaken—till when, one man's guess is as good as another's. The age of a tree may be reckoned from its concentric rings, but the age of a language, a doctrine, or a polity, has neither bark nor wood, neither teeth like a horse, nor a register like a child.