1. "In the beginning there arose the golden Child—He was the one born lord of all that is. He established the earth and this sky;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 2. He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose command all the bright gods revere; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 3. He who through his power is the one King of the breathing and awakening world; He who governs all man and beast; Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 4. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness the sea proclaims, with the distant river—He whose these regions are, as it were his two arms;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 5. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm—He through whom the heaven was established,—nay, the highest heaven;—He who measured out the light in the air;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, took up, trembling inwardly—He over whom the rising sun shines forth;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole life of the bright gods;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 8. He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; He who alone is God above all gods;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 9. May He not destroy us—He the creator of the earth; or He, the righteous, who created the heaven; He also created the bright and mighty waters;—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?" (Chips, vol. i. p. 29, or A. S. L., p. 569.—Rig-Veda, x. 121).
The same book contains a very important hymn, entitled the Purusha Sûkta. In it we find ourselves transported from the transparent elemental worship of the ancient Aryas into the misty region of Brahmanical subtleties. Purusha appears to be conceived as the universal essence of the world, all existences being but one-quarter of him. The theory of sacrifice occupies, as in the later Indian literature generally, a prominent position. Purusha's sacrifice involved the momentous consequences of the creation of the several Vedas and of living creatures. The four castes sprang from different parts of his person, the parts corresponding to their relative dignity. The purpose of this portion is obvious, namely, to give greater sanctity to the system of caste, a system to which the earlier hymn makes no allusion, and which we may suppose to have grown up subsequently to the era of their composition. Tedious as it is, the Purusha Sûkta is too weighty to be quite passed over.
1. "Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. On every side enveloping the earth, he overpassed (it) by a space of ten fingers. 2. Purusha himself is this whole (universe), whatever has been and whatever shall be. He is also the lord of immortality, since (or when) by food he expands. 3. Such is his greatness, and Purusha is superior to this. All existences are a quarter of him; and three-fourths of him are that which is immortal in the sky. 4. With three-quarters Purusha mounted upwards. A quarter of him was again produced here. He was then diffused everywhere over things which eat and things which do not eat. 5. From him was born Virāj, and from Virāj, Purusha. When born, he extended beyond the earth, both behind and before. 6. When the gods performed a sacrifice with Purusha as the oblation, the spring was its butter, the summer its fuel, and the autumn its (accompanying) offering. 7. This victim, Purusha, born in the beginning, they immolated on the sacrificial grass. With him the gods, the Sādhyas, and the Rishis sacrificed. 9. From that universal sacrifice sprang the rich and sāman verses, the metres and the yajush. 10. From it sprang horses, and all animals with two rows of teeth; kine sprang from it; from it goats and sheep. 11. When (the gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut him up? what was his mouth? what arms (had he)? what (two objects) are said (to have been) his thighs and feet? 12. The Brahman was his mouth; the Râjanya was made his arms; the being (called) the Vaisya, he was his thighs; the Sûdra sprang from his feet. 13. The moon sprang from his soul (manas), the sun from his eye, Indra and Agni from his mouth, and Vāyu from his breath. 14. From his navel arose the air, from his head the sky, from his feet the earth, from his ear the (four) quarters; in this manner (the gods) formed the worlds. 15. When the gods, performing sacrifice, bound Purusha as a victim, there were seven sticks (stuck up) for it (around the fire), and thrice seven pieces of fuel were made. 16. With sacrifice the gods performed the sacrifice. These were the earliest rites. These great powers have sought the sky, where are the former Sādhyas, gods" (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 9.—Rig-Veda, x. 90).
The wide interval which separates theological theories of this kind from the primitive hymns to the old polytheistic gods, is also marked by a tendency to personify abstract intellectual conceptions, and to confer exalted attributes upon them. Skambha, or Support, mentioned above; Kâla, Time, celebrated in the Atharva-Veda; Speech, endowed with personal powers in the tenth book of the Rig-Veda; Wisdom, to whom prayer is offered in the Atharva-Veda, are instances of this generalizing tendency. As a specimen, the hymn to Wisdom may be taken, and readers may console themselves with the reflection that it is our last quotation from the Mantra part of the Veda:—
1. "Come to us, wisdom, the first, with cows and horses; (come) thou with the rays of the sun; thou art to us an object of worship. 2. To (obtain) the succor of the gods, I invoke wisdom the first, full of prayer, inspired by prayer, praised by rishis, imbibed by Brahmachārins. 3. We introduce within me that wisdom which Ribhus know, that wisdom which divine beings (asurāh) know, that excellent wisdom which rishis know. 4. Make me, O Agni, wise to-day with that wisdom which the wise rishis—the makers of things existing—know. 5. We introduce wisdom in the evening, wisdom in the morning, wisdom at noon, wisdom with the rays of the sun, and with speech" (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 255 note.—Atharva-Veda, vi. 108).
Interesting as the Mantra of the Vedas is from the fact of its being the oldest Bible of the Aryan race, it is impossible for modern readers to feel much enthusiasm for its contents. The patient labor of these scholars who have engaged in translations of some parts of it for the benefit of European readers is highly commendable, but it is probable that few who have read any considerable number of these hymns will be desirous of a further acquaintance with them, unless for the purpose of some special researches. Indeed, it may be said that the devoted industry of Benfey, Muir, Max Müller, and others, has placed more than a sufficient number of them within reach of the general public to enable us all to judge of their literary value and their religious teaching. With regard to the former, it would be difficult to concede to them anything but a very modest place. In beauty of style, expression, or ideas, they appear to me to be almost totally deficient. Assuming, as we are entitled to do, that all the best specimens have been already culled by scholars eager to find something attractive in the Veda, it must be confessed that the general run of the hymns is singularly monotonous, and their language by no means conspicuous for poetical coloring. No doubt, poetry always loses in translation; but Isaiah and Homer are still beautiful in a German or English dress; the Sûktas of the Rig-Veda are not. A few exceptions no doubt occur, as in the stanzas to Ushas, or Dawn, quoted above, but the ordinary level is not a high one.
Although, however, the literary merit of the Veda cannot be ranked high, its value to the religious history of humanity at large, and of our race in particular, can hardly be overrated. To the comparative mythologist, above all, it possesses illimitable interest, from the new light it sheds upon the origin and significance of many of those world-wide tales which, in their metamorphosed Hellenic shape, could not be effectually brought under the process of dissection by which their primitive elements have now been laid bare. Mythology is beyond the province of this work, and therefore I purposely refrain from entering upon any explanation of the physical meaning of the old Aryan gods, or of the stories in which they figure.[57] All that I have to do with here is the grade attained in the development of religious feeling among those who worshiped them. And this, it is plain, was at first a very elementary one. The more striking phenomena of nature—the sun, the moon, the sky, the storms, the dawn, the fire—at first attracted their attention, and absorbed their adoration. To these personal beings, as they seemed to the awe-struck Rishis, petitions of the rudest type were confidently addressed. Very little allusion, if any, was made to the necessities of the moral nature; the craving for spiritual knowledge was scarcely felt; but great stress was laid on temporal prosperity. Boons of the most material kind were looked for at the hands of the gods. Plenty of offspring, plenty of physical strength, plenty of property, especially in cattle, and victory over enemies; such are the requests most commonly poured into the ears of Indra, or Agni, or the Maruts. These gods are regarded as the sympathizing friends of men, and if they should fail to do what may reasonably be expected of a god, are almost upbraided for their negligence. The conception of their power is a high one, though that of their moral nature is still rudimentary. Their greatness and their glory, their victories, their splendor, are described in vigorous and high-sounding phrases. The changes are rung upon their peculiar attributes or their famous exploits. Each god in his turn is a great god; but all are separate individuals; there appears in the crude Aryan mind to be as yet no dawning of the perplexing questions on the unity of the Divine which troubled its later development. For as it progresses, the Hindu religion gradually changes. External calm, succeeding the wars of the first settlers, promotes internal activity. The great problem of the Universe is no longer solved, five or six centuries after the older Rishis had passed away, in the simple fashion which satisfied their curiosity. Multiplicity is now resolved into unity; mystical abstractions take the place of the elementary powers of nature. Speech is a goddess; the Vedas themselves—as in the Purusha hymn—acquire a quasi-divinity; the Brahmachârin, or student of theology, is endowed with supernatural attributes, due to the sacred character of his pursuits. Sacrifice, fixed and regulated down to the smallest minutiæ, has a peculiar efficacy, and becomes something of far deeper meaning than a merely acceptable present to the gods. Every posture, every word, every tone acquires importance. There are charms, there are curses, there are incantations for good and evil purposes, for the acquisition of wealth or the destruction of an enemy. It is by its collection of such magical formulæ that the Atharva-Veda is distinguished from its three predecessors. It forms the last stone laid upon the edifice of the genuine Veda, an edifice built up by the labor of many centuries, and including the whole of that original revelation to which the centuries that succeeded it bowed down in reverence and in faith.
Subdivision 2.—The Brâhmanas.
Attached to this edifice as an outgrowth rather than an integral part, the treatises known as Brâhmanas took their place as appendages of the Sanhitâ. Although they are reckoned by the Hindus as belonging to the Sruti, although their nominal rank is thus not inferior to that of the true Veda, yet it must have taken them many generations to acquire a position of honor to which nothing but tradition could possibly entitle them. For any gleams of poetical inspiration, of imaginative religious feeling, of naturalness or simple earnestness that had shone athwart the minds of devout authors in preceding ages, had apparently passed away when the Brâhmanas were composed. They are the elaborate disquisitions of scholars, not the outpourings of men of feeling. Religion was cut and dried when they were written; every part of it has become a matter of definition, of theory, of classification. If in the Vedic hymns we are placed before a stage where religious faith is a living body, whose movements, perhaps uncouth, are still energetic and genuine, the Brâmhanas, on the other hand, take us into the dissecting-room, where the constituent elements of its corpse are exposed to our observation. Not indeed that a true or deep faith had ceased in the Brâhmana period; such an assertion would no doubt be extravagant; but the Brâhmanas themselves are the products of minds more given to analysis than to sentiment, and of an age in which the predominant tendency, at least among cultivated Brahmans, was not so much to feel religion as to think about it. It is so everywhere. The Hebrew Bible, once fixed and completed, gives rise to the Mishnah. The Apostles and Fathers of the Christian Church are followed by a race of schoolmen. The simple Sûtras of Buddhism, replete with plain, world-wide lessons of moral truth, give place to the abstruse developments of incomprehensible theology. Thus the Brâhmanas mark the epoch when the Veda had finally ceased to grow, and its every word and letter had become the object of an unquestioning adoration as the immediate emanation of God.
But among a people so subtle and so inquisitive in all matters of religious belief as the Hindus, opinion could not rest unmoved upon the original foundation. Their minds did not, like those of the Jews, stop short for ever in their intellectual progression, chained to the unshakeable rock of a god-given Revelation. Ever active, ever attracted to the enigmas of life, the Brahmans pushed their speculations into new regions of thought, pondered upon new problems, and invented new solutions. Not that we are to expect to find in the literature of this period any valuable discoveries or any very striking philosophy. The true philosophical systems came later. But still we do find a restless spirit of inquiry, ever prompting fresh efforts to conceive the significance of the gods or to penetrate the mysteries of nature, though the questions discussed are often trifling, and the results arrived at frivolous.