A History of Sanskrit Literature

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thought, as well as by skill in the handling of language and metre. From this point, for a period of more than a thousand years, Indian literature bears an exclusively religious stamp; even those latest productions of the Vedic age which cannot be called directly religious are yet m

from ?ich, "a laudatory stanza"), consisting entirely of lyrics, mainly in praise of different gods. It may, therefore, be described as the book of hymns or psalms. The Sāma-veda has practically no independent value, for it consists entirely of stanzas (excepting only 75) taken from the Rigveda and arranged solely with reference to their place in the Soma sacrifice. Being meant to be sung to certain fixed melodies, it may be called the book of chants (sāman). The Yajur-veda differs in one essential respect from the Sāma-veda, It consists not only of stanzas (?ich), mostly borrowed from the Rigveda, but

of the older collection. In spirit, however, it is not only entirely different from the Rigveda, but represents a much more primitive stage of thought. While the Rigveda deals almost exclusively with the higher gods as conceived by a comparatively advanced and refined sacerdotal class, the Atharva-veda is, in the main, a book of spells and incantations appealing to the demon world, and teems with notions a

es to the elaboration of the sacrificial ceremonial. The result was a ritual system far surpassing in complexity of detail anything the world has elsewhere known. The main importance of the old Vedic hymns and formulas now came to be their application to the innumerable details of the sacrifice. Around this combination of sacred verse and rite a new body of doctrine grew up in sacerdotal tradition, and finally assumed definite shape in the guise of distinct theological treatises entitled Brāhma?as, "books dealing with devotion or prayer" (brahman). They evide

o support their explanations of the ceremonial, they interweave exegetical, linguistic, and etymological observations, and introduce myths and philosophical speculations in confirmation of their cosmogonic and theosophic theories. They form an aggregate of shallow and pedantic discussions, full of sacerdotal conceits, and fanciful

tical in matter and form; the Brāhma?as are prosaic and written in prose. The thought of the Vedas is on the whole natural and concrete; that

r rite, by selecting from the hymns the verses applicable to it. The Brāhma?as of the Sāma-veda are concerned only with the duties of the udgāt?i or "chanter" of the Sāmans; the Brāhma?as of the Yajur-veda with those of the adhvaryu, or the priest who is the actual sacrificer. Again, the Brāhma?as of the Rigveda more or less follow the order of the ritual, quite irrespectively of

r themselves the dominant power which they have maintained ever since. The life of no other people has been so saturated with sacerdotal influence as that of the Hindus, among whom sacred learning is still the monopoly of the hereditary priestly caste. While in other early societies the chief power remained in the hands of princes and warrior nobles, the domination o

sphere of revelation are included the later portions of the Brāhma?as, which form treatises of a specially theosophic character, and being meant to be imparted or studied in the solitude of the forest, are called āra?yakas or "Forest-books." The final part of t

doubt than the later works on religious and civil usage, called sm?iti

rvey of the sum of these scattered details. They are not concerned with the interpretation of ceremonial or custom, but aim at giving a plain and methodical account of the whole course of the rites or practices with which they deal. For this purpose the utmost brevity was needed, a requirement which was certainly met in a manner unparalleled elsewhere. The very name of this class of literature, sūtra, "thread" or "clue" (from siv, "to sew"), points to its main characteristic and chief object-extreme conciseness. The prose in which these works are composed is so compressed that the wording of the most

e evolution of their style is obviously in the direction of increased succinctness. Research, it is true, has hitherto failed to arrive at any definite result as to the date of their composition. Linguistic investigations, however, tend to show that the Sūtras are cl

r the performance of which three or more sacred fires, as well as the ministrations of priests, are necessary. Not one of them presents a complete picture of the sacrifice, because each of them, like the Brāhma?as, describes only the duties of o

performed by a priest, but by the householder himself in company with his wife. For this reason there is, apart from deviations in arrangement and expression, omission or addition, no essential difference between the various G?ihya Sūtras, except that the verses t

ūtras, which are in general the oldest sources of Indian law. As is implied by the term dharma, "religion and morality," their point of view is chiefly a

ollecting stray references. But in the ritual Sūtras we possess the ancient manuals which the priests used as the foundation of their sacrificial lore. Their statements are so systematic and detailed that it is possible to reconstruct from them various sacrifices without having seen them performed. They are thus of great importance for the history of religious institutions. But the Sūtras have a further value

most important classes of this ancillary literature comprises the Prāti?ākhya Sūtras, which, dealing with accentuation, pronunciation, metre, and other matters, are chiefly concerned with the phonetic changes undergone by Vedic words when combined in a sentence. They contain a number of minute observations, such as have only been made over again by the phoneticians of the present day in Europe. A still more important branch of this subsidiary literature is grammar, in which the results a

"Indices," which quote the first words of each hymn, its author, the deity celebrated in it, the number of verses it contains, and the metre in which it

now turn to a more detailed consideration of the