names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it
would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books. Do we
ever find much beyond such matters in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or in
Cuneiform inscriptions? In fact, what does the ancient history of the
world before Cyrus, before 500 B.C., consist of, but meagre lists of
Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian dynasties? What do the tablets of
Karnak, the palaces of Nineveh, and the cylinders of Babylon tell us
about the thoughts of men? All is dead and barren, nowhere a sigh,
nowhere a jest, nowhere a glimpse of humanity. There has been but one
oasis in that vast desert of ancient Asiatic history, the history of
the Jews. Another such oasis is the Veda. Here, too, we come to a
stratum of ancient thought, of ancient feelings, hopes, joys, and
fears,--of ancient religion. There is perhaps too little of kings and
battles in the Veda, and scarcely anything of the chronological
framework of history. But poets surely are better than kings, hymns
and prayers are more worth listening to than the agonies of butchered
armies, and guesses at truth more valuable than unmeaning titles of
Egyptian or Babylonian despots. It will be difficult to settle whether
the Veda is 'the oldest of books,' and whether some of the portions of
the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an
earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Veda. But, in the Aryan
world, the Veda is certainly the oldest book, and its preservation
amounts almost to a marvel.
It is nearly twenty years ago that my attention was first drawn to
the Veda, while attending, in the years 1846 and 1847, the lectures of
Eugene Burnouf at the College de France. I was then looking out, like
most young men at that time of life, for some great work, and without
weighing long the difficulties which had hitherto prevented the
publication of the Veda, I determined to devote all my time to the
collection of the materials necessary for such an undertaking. I had
read the principal works of the later Sanskrit literature, but had
found little there that seemed to be more than curious. But to publish
the Veda, a work that had never before been published in India or in
Europe, that occupied in the history of Sanskrit literature the same
position which the Old Testament occupies in the history of the Jews,
the New Testament in the history of modern Europe, the Koran in the
history of Mohammedanism,--a work which fills a gap in the history of
the human mind, and promises to bring us nearer than any other work to
the first beginnings of Aryan language and Aryan thought,--this seemed
to me an undertaking not altogether unworthy a man's life. What added
to the charm of it was that it had once before been undertaken by
Frederick Rosen, a young German scholar, who died in England before he
had finished the first book, and that after his death no one seemed
willing to carry on his work. What I had to do, first of all, was to
copy not only the text, but the commentary of the Rig-veda, a work
which when finished will fill six of these large volumes. The author
or rather the compiler of this commentary, Saya_n_a A_k_arya, lived
about 1400 after Christ, that is to say, about as many centuries
after, as the poets of the Veda lived before, the beginning of our
era. Yet through the 3000 years which separate the original poetry of
the Veda from the latest commentary, there runs an almost continuous
stream of tradition, and it is from it, rather than from his own
brain, that Saya_n_a draws his explanations of the sacred texts.
Numerous MSS., more or less complete, more or less inaccurate, of
Saya_n_a's classical work, existed in the then Royal Library at Paris,
in the Library of the East-India House, then in Leadenhall Street, and
in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But to copy and collate these MSS.
was by no means all. A number of other works were constantly quoted in
Saya_n_a's commentary, and these quotations had all to be verified. It
was necessary first to copy these works, and to make indexes to all of
them, in order to be able to find any passage that might be referred
to in the larger commentary. Many of these works have since been
published in Germany and France, but they were not to be procured
twenty years ago. The work, of course, proceeded but slowly, and many
times I doubted whether I should be able to carry it through. Lastly
came the difficulty,--and by no means the smallest,--who was to
publish a work that would occupy about six thousand pages in quarto,
all in Sanskrit, and of which probably not a hundred copies would ever
be sold. Well, I came to England in order to collect more materials at
the East-India House and at the Bodleian Library, and thanks to the
exertions of my generous friend Baron Bunsen, and of the late
Professor Wilson, the Board of Directors of the East-India Company
decided to defray the expenses of a work which, as they stated in
their letter, 'is in a peculiar manner deserving of the patronage of
the East-India Company, connected as it is with the early religion,
history, and language of the great body of their Indian subjects.' It
thus became necessary for me to take up my abode in England, which has
since become my second home. The first volume was published in 1849,
the second in 1853, the third in 1856, the fourth in 1862. The
materials for the remaining volumes are ready, so that, if I can but
make leisure, there is little doubt that before long the whole work
will be complete.
Now, first, as to the name. Veda means originally knowing or
knowledge, and this name is given by the Brahmans not to one work, but
to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the
same word which appears in the Greek [Greek: oida], I know, and in the
English wise, wisdom, to wit.[10] The name of Veda is commonly given
to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the
names of Rig-veda, Ya_g_ur-veda, Sama-veda, and Atharva-veda; but for
our own purposes, namely for tracing the earliest growth of religious
ideas in India, the only important, the only real Veda, is the
Rig-veda.
[Footnote 10:
Sanskrit Greek Gothic Anglo-Saxon German
veda [Greek: oida] vait wat ich weiss
vettha [Greek: oistha] vaist wast du weisst
veda [Greek: oide] vait wat er weiss
vidva -- vitu -- --
vidathu_h_ [Greek: iston] vituts -- --
vidatu_h_ [Greek: iston] -- -- --
vidma [Greek: ismen] vitum witon wir wissen
vida [Greek: iste] vituth wite ihr wisset
vidu_h_ [Greek: isasi] vitun witan sie wissen.
]
The other so-called Vedas, which deserve the name of Veda no more than
the Talmud deserves the name of Bible, contain chiefly extracts from
the Rig-veda, together with sacrificial formulas, charms, and
incantations, many of them, no doubt, extremely curious, but never
likely to interest any one except the Sanskrit scholar by profession.
The Ya_g_ur-veda and Sama-veda may be described as prayer-books,
arranged according to the order of certain sacrifices, and intended to
be used by certain classes of priests.
Four classes of priests were required in India at the most solemn
sacrifices:
1. The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes;
who have chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress
the altar, slay the victims, and pour out the libations.
2. The choristers, who chant the sacred hymns.
3. The reciters or readers, who repeat certain hymns.
4. The overseers or bishops, who watch and superintend the
proceedings of the other priests, and ought to be familiar
with all the Vedas.
The formulas and verses to be muttered by the first class are
contained in the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhita. The hymns to be sung by the
second class are in the Sama-veda-sanhita.
The Atharva-veda is said to be intended for the Brahman or overseer,
who is to watch the proceedings of the sacrifice, and to remedy any
mistake that may occur.[11]
[Footnote 11: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 449.]
Fortunately, the hymns to be recited by the third class were not
arranged in a sacrificial prayer-book, but were preserved in an old
collection of hymns, containing all that had been saved of ancient,
sacred, and popular poetry, more like the Psalms than like a ritual; a
collection made for its own sake, and not for the sake of any
sacrificial performances.
I shall, therefore, confine my remarks to the Rig-veda, which in the
eyes of the historical student is the Veda _par excellence_. Now
Rig-veda means the Veda of hymns of praise, for _R_ich, which before
the initial soft letter of Veda is changed to _R_ig, is derived from a
root which in Sanskrit means to celebrate.
In the Rig-veda we must distinguish again between the original collection
of the hymns or Mantras, called the Sanhita or the collection, being
entirely metrical and poetical, and a number of prose works, called
Brahma_n_as and Sutras, written in prose, and giving information on the
proper use of the hymns at sacrifices, on their sacred meaning, on their
supposed authors, and similar topics. These works, too, go by the name of
Rig-veda: but though very curious in themselves, they are evidently of a
much later period, and of little help to us in tracing the beginnings of
religious life in India. For that purpose we must depend entirely on the
hymns, such as we find them in the Sanhita or the collection of the
Rig-veda.
Now this collection consists of ten books, and contains altogether
1028 hymns. As early as about 600 B.C. we find that in the theological
schools of India every verse, every word, every syllable of the Veda
had been carefully counted. The number of verses as computed in
treatises of that date, varies from 10,402 to 10,622; that of the
words is 153,826, that of the syllables 432,000.[12] With these
numbers, and with the description given in these early treatises of
each hymn, of its metre, its deity, its number of verses, our modern
MSS. of the Veda correspond as closely as could be expected.
[Footnote 12: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' second
edition, p. 219 seq.]
I say, our modern MSS., for all our MSS. are modern, and very modern.
Few Sanskrit MSS. are more than four or five hundred years old, the
fact being that in the damp climate of India no paper will last for
more than a few centuries. How then, you will naturally ask, can it be
proved that the original hymns were composed between 1200 and 1500
before the Christian era, if our MSS. only carry us back to about the
same date after the Christian era? It is not very easy to bridge over
this gulf of nearly three thousand years, but all I can say is that,
after carefully examining every possible objection that can be made
against the date of the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high
antiquity which is ascribed to them, has not, as far as I can judge,
been shaken. I shall try to explain on what kind of evidence these
claims rest.
You know that we possess no MS. of the Old Testament in Hebrew older
than about the tenth century after the Christian era; yet the
Septuagint translation by itself would be sufficient to prove that the
Old Testament, such as we now read it, existed in MS. previous, at
least, to the third century before our era. By a similar train of
argument, the works to which I referred before, in which we find every
hymn, every verse, every word and syllable of the Veda accurately
counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years before
Christ, guarantee the existence of the Veda, such as we now read it,
as far back at least as five or six hundred years before Christ. Now
in the works of that period, the Veda is already considered, not only
as an ancient, but as a sacred book; and, more than this, its language
had ceased to be generally intelligible. The language of India had
changed since the Veda was composed, and learned commentaries were
necessary in order to explain to the people, then living, the true
purport, nay, the proper pronunciation, of their sacred hymns. But
more than this. In certain exegetical compositions, which are
generally comprised under the name of Sutras, and which are
contemporary with, or even anterior to, the treatises on the
theological statistics just mentioned, not only are the ancient hymns
represented as invested with sacred authority, but that other class of
writings, the Brahma_n_as, standing half-way between the hymns and the
Sutras, have likewise been raised to the dignity of a revealed
literature. These Brahma_n_as, you will remember, are prose treatises,
written in illustration of the ancient sacrifices and of the hymns
employed at them. Such treatises would only spring up when some kind
of explanation began to be wanted both for the ceremonial and for the
hymns to be recited at certain sacrifices, and we find, in
consequence, that in many cases the authors of the Brahma_n_as had
already lost the power of understanding the text of the ancient hymns
in its natural and grammatical meaning, and that they suggested the
most absurd explanations of the various sacrificial acts, most of
which, we may charitably suppose, had originally some rational
purpose. Thus it becomes evident that the period during which the
hymns were composed must have been separated by some centuries, at
least, from the period that gave birth to the Brahma_n_as, in order to
allow time for the hymns growing unintelligible and becoming invested
with a sacred character. Secondly, the period during which the
Brahma_n_as were composed must be separated by some centuries from the
authors of the Sutras, in order to allow time for further changes in
the language, and more particularly for the growth of a new theology,
which ascribed to the Brahma_n_as the same exceptional and revealed
character which the Brahma_n_as themselves ascribed to the hymns. So
that we want previously to 600 B.C., when every syllable of the Veda
was counted, at least two strata of intellectual and literary growth,
of two or three centuries each; and are thus brought to 1100 or 1200
B.C. as the earliest time when we may suppose the collection of the
Vedic hymns to have been finished. This collection of hymns again
contains, by its own showing, ancient and modern hymns, the hymns of
the sons together with the hymns of their fathers and earlier
ancestors; so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200
to 1500 before our era, for the original composition of those simple
hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with
the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the
Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.
That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more
tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from
China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from
Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four
Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and
states that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the
seventh to the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts.
At the time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was
clearly on the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against
Brahmanism, and chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans
claimed, and which from the beginning were represented by them as based on
their revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human
attacks. Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state
religion of India under A_s_oka, the Constantine of India, in the middle of
the third century B.C. This A_s_oka was the third king of a new dynasty
founded by _K_andragupta, the well-known contemporary of Alexander and
Seleucus, about 315 B.C. The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and
it is under this dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number
of distinguished scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess,
such as _S_aunaka, Katyayana, A_s_valayana, and others. Their works, and
others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back
to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the Sutra
period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the
Brahma_n_as, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing
lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different
classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three
or four classes of priests, has its own Brahma_n_as and its own Sutras;
and as the Brahma_n_as are presupposed by the Sutras, while no Sutra is
ever quoted by the Brahma_n_as, it is clear that the period of the
Brahma_n_a literature must have preceded the period of the Sutra
literature. There are, however, old and new Brahma_n_as, and there are in
the Brahma_n_as themselves long lists of teachers who handed down old
Brahma_n_as or composed new ones, so that it seems impossible to
accommodate the whole of that literature in less than two centuries, from
about 800 to 600 B.C. Before, however, a single Brahma_n_a could have been
composed, it was not only necessary that there should have been one
collection of ancient hymns, like that contained in the ten books of the
Rig-veda, but the three or four classes of priests must have been
established, the officiating priests and the choristers must have had their
special prayer-books, nay, these prayer-books must have undergone certain
changes, because the Brahma_n_as presuppose different texts, called sakhas,
of each of these prayer-books, which are called the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhita,
the Sama-veda-sanhita, and the Atharva-veda-sanhita. The work of collecting
the prayers for the different classes of priests, and of adding new hymns
and formulas for purely sacrificial purposes, belonged probably to the
tenth century B.C., and three generations more would, at least, be required
to account for the various readings adopted in the prayer-books by
different sects, and invested with a kind of sacred authority, long before
the composition of even the earliest among the Brahma_n_as. If, therefore,
the years from about 1000 to 800 B.C. are assigned to this collecting age,
the time before 1000 B.C. must be set apart for the free and natural
growth of what was then national and religious, but not yet sacred and
sacrificial poetry. How far back this period extends it is impossible to
tell; it is enough if the hymns of the Rig-veda can be traced to a period
anterior to 1000 B.C.
Much in the chronological arrangement of the three periods of Vedic
literature that are supposed to have followed the period of the
original growth of the hymns, must of necessity be hypothetical, and
has been put forward rather to invite than to silence criticism. In
order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must
welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who
approve and confirm our discoveries. What seems, however, to speak
strongly in favour of the historical character of the three periods of
Vedic literature is the uniformity of style which marks the
productions of each. In modern literature we find, at one and the same
time, different styles of prose and poetry cultivated by one and the
same author. A Goethe writes tragedy, comedy, satire, lyrical poetry,
and scientific prose; but we find nothing like this in primitive
literature. The individual is there much less prominent, and the
poet's character disappears in the general character of the layer of
literature to which he belongs. It is the discovery of such large
layers of literature following each other in regular succession which
inspires the critical historian with confidence in the truly
historical character of the successive literary productions of ancient
India. As in Greece there is an epic age of literature, where we
should look in vain for prose or dramatic poetry; as in that country
we never meet with real elegiac poetry before the end of the eighth
century, nor with iambics before the same date; as even in more
modern times rhymed heroic poetry appears in England with the Norman
conquest, and in Germany the Minnesaenger rise and set with the Swabian
dynasty--so, only in a much more decided manner, we see in the ancient
and spontaneous literature of India, an age of poets followed by an
age of collectors and imitators, that age to be succeeded by an age of
theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of
scientific manuals. New wants produced new supplies, and nothing
sprang up or was allowed to live, in prose or poetry, except what was
really wanted. If the works of poets, collectors, imitators,
theologians, and teachers were all mixed up together--if the
Brahma_n_as quoted the Sutras, and the hymns alluded to the
Brahma_n_as--an historical restoration of the Vedic literature of
India would be almost an impossibility. We should suspect artificial
influences, and look with small confidence on the historical character
of such a literary agglomerate. But he who would question the
antiquity of the Veda must explain how the layers of literature were
formed that are super-imposed over the original stratum of the poetry
of the Rishis; he who would suspect a literary forgery must show how,
when, and for what purpose the 1000 hymns of the Rig-veda could have
been forged, and have become the basis of the religious, moral,
political, and literary life of the ancient inhabitants of India.
The idea of revelation, and I mean more particularly book-revelation,
is not a modern idea, nor is it an idea peculiar to Christianity.
Though we look for it in vain in the literature of Greece and Rome, we
find the literature of India saturated with this idea from beginning
to end. In no country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been
so minutely elaborated as in India. The name for revelation in
Sanskrit is _S_ruti, which means hearing; and this title distinguishes
the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Brahma_n_as also, from all
other works, which, however sacred, and authoritative to the Hindu
mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors. The Laws of
Manu, for instance, according to the Brahmanic theology, are not
revelation; they are not _S_ruti, but only Sm_r_iti, which means
recollection or tradition. If these laws or any other work of
authority can be proved on any point to be at variance with a single
passage of the Veda, their authority is at once overruled. According
to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the
Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or
other the work of the Deity; and even those who received the
revelation, or, as they express it, those who saw it, were not
supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of
common humanity, and less liable therefore to error in the reception
of revealed truth. The views entertained of revelation by the orthodox
theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of
the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The human
element, called paurusheyatva in Sanskrit, is driven out of every
corner or hiding-place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the
mind of the Deity before the beginning of time, every allusion to
historical events, of which there are not a few, is explained away
with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.