I do not wish by what I have said to raise any exaggerated expectations as to the worth of these ancient hymns of the Veda, and the character of that religion which they indicate rather than fully describe. The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high. Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious, low, common-place. The gods are constantly invoked to protect their worshippers, to grant them food, large flocks, large families, and a long life; for all which benefits they are to be rewarded by the praises and sacrifices offered day after day, or at certain seasons of the year. But hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones. Only in order to appreciate them justly, we must try to divest ourselves of the common notions about Polytheism, so repugnant not only to our feelings, but to our understanding. No doubt, if we must employ technical terms, the religion of the Veda is Polytheism, not Monotheism. Deities are invoked by different names, some clear and intelligible, such as Agni, fire; Surya, the sun; Ushas, dawn; Maruts, the storms; Prithivi, the earth; Ap, the waters; Nadi, the rivers; others such as Varuna, Mitra, Indra, which have become proper names, and disclose but dimly their original application to the great aspects of nature, the sky, the sun, the day. But whenever one of these individual gods is invoked, they are not conceived as limited by the powers of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the mind of the supplicant as good as all gods. He is felt, at the time, as a real divinity,—as supreme and absolute,—without a suspicion of those limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods must entail on every single god. All the rest disappear for a moment from the vision of the poet, and he only who is to fulfill their desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers. In one hymn, ascribed to Manu, the poet says: "Among you, O gods, there is none that is small, none that is young; you are all great indeed." And this is indeed the key-note of the ancient Aryan worship. Yet it would be easy to find in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every important deity is represented as supreme and absolute. Thus in one hymn, Agni (fire) is called "the ruler of the universe," "the lord of men," "the wise king, the father, the brother, the son, the friend of man;" nay, all the powers and names of the other gods are distinctly ascribed to Agni. But though Agni is thus highly exalted, nothing is said to disparage the divine character of the other gods. In another hymn another god, Indra, is said to be greater than all: "The gods," it is said, "do not reach thee, Indra, nor men; thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Another god, Soma, is called the king of the world, the king of heaven and earth, the conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve, in trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what another poet says of another god, Varuna: "Thou art lord of all, of heaven and earth; thou art the king of all, of those who are gods, and of those who are men!"

This surely is not what is commonly understood by Polytheism. Yet it would be equally wrong to call it Monotheism. If we must have a name for it, I should call it Kathenotheism. The consciousness that all the deities are but different names of one and the same godhead, breaks forth indeed here and there in the Veda. But it is far from being general. One poet, for instance, says (Rv. I. 164, 46): "They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the beautiful-winged heavenly Garutmat: that which is One the wise call it in divers manners: they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan." And again (Rv. X. 114, 5): "Wise poets make the beautiful-winged, though he is one, manifold by words."

* * * * *

I shall read you a few Vedic verses, in which the religious sentiment predominates, and in which we perceive a yearning after truth, and after the true God, untrammeled as yet by any names or any traditions[16] (Rv. X. 121):—

[Footnote 16: History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 569.]

1. In the beginning there arose the golden Child—He was the one born lord of all that is. He stablished 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 stablished,—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, look 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;—

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?[17]

The following may serve as specimens of hymns addressed to individual deities whose names have become the centres of religious thought and legendary traditions; deities, in fact, like Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, or Minerva, no longer mere germs, but fully developed forms of early thought and language:

[Footnote 17: A last verse is added, which entirely spoils the poetical beauty and the whole character of the hymn. Its later origin seems to have struck even native critics, for the author of the Pada text did not receive it. 'O Pragapati, no other than thou hast embraced all these created things; may what we desired when we called on thee, be granted to us, may we be lords of riches.']

HYMN TO INDRA (Rv. I. 53).[18]

1. Keep silence well![19] we offer praises to the great Indra in the house of the sacrificer. Does he find treasure for those who are like sleepers? Mean praise is not valued among the munificent.

2. Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver of cows, the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the old guide of man, disappointing no desires, a friend to friends:—to him we address this song.

3. O powerful Indra, achiever of many works, most brilliant god—all this wealth around here is known to be thine alone: take from it, conqueror! bring it hither! Do not stint the desire of the worshipper who longs for thee!

4. On these days thou art gracious, and on these nights,[20] keeping off the enemy from our cows and from our stud. Tearing[21] the fiend night after night with the help of Indra, let us rejoice in food, freed from haters.

5. Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure and food, in wealth of manifold delight and splendour. Let us rejoice in the blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of offspring, gives us cows first and horses.

6. These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave! these were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake of the poet, the sacrificer, thou struckest down irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.

7. From battle to battle thou advancest bravely, from town to town thou destroyest all this with might, when thou, Indra, with Nami as thy friend, struckest down from afar the deceiver Namuki.

8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Parnaya with the brightest spear of Atithigva. Without a helper thou didst demolish the hundred cities of Vangrida, which were besieged by Rigisvan.

9. Thou hast felled down with the chariot-wheel these twenty kings of men, who had attacked the friendless Susravas,[22] and gloriously the sixty thousand and ninety-nine forts.

10. Thou, Indra, hast succoured Susravas with thy succours, Turvayana with thy protections. Thou hast made Kutsa, Atithigva, and Ayu subject to this mighty youthful king.

11. We who in future, protected by the gods, wish to be thy most blessed friends, we shall praise thee, blessed by thee with offspring, and enjoying henceforth a longer life.

[Footnote 18: I subjoin for some of the hymns here translated, the translation of the late Professor Wilson, in order to show what kind of difference there is between the traditional rendering of the Vedic hymns, as adopted by him, and their interpretation according to the rules of modern scholarship:

1. We ever offer fitting praise to the mighty Indra, in the dwelling of the worshipper, by which he (the deity) has quickly acquired riches, as (a thief) hastily carries (off the property) of the sleeping. Praise ill expressed is not valued among the munificent.

2. Thou, Indra, art the giver of horses, of cattle, of barley, the master and protector of wealth, the foremost in liberality, (the being) of many days; thou disappointest not desires (addressed to thee); thou art a friend to our friends: such an Indra we praise.

3. Wise and resplendent Indra, the achiever of great deeds, the riches that are spread around are known to be thine: having collected them, victor (over thy enemies), bring them to us: disappoint not the expectation of the worshipper who trusts in thee.

4. Propitiated by these offerings, by these libations, dispel poverty with cattle and horses: may we, subduing our adversary, and relieved from enemies by Indra, (pleased) by our libations, enjoy together abundant food.

5. Indra, may we become possessed of riches, and of food; and with energies agreeable to many, and shining around, may we prosper through thy divine favour, the source of prowess, of cattle, and of horses.

6. Those who were thy allies, (the Maruts,) brought thee joy: protector of the pious, those libations and oblations (that were offered thee on slaying Vritra), yielded thee delight, when thou, unimpeded by foes, didst destroy the ten thousand obstacles opposed to him who praised thee and offered thee libations.

7. Humiliator (of adversaries), thou goest from battle to battle, and destroyest by thy might city after city: with thy foe-prostrating associate, (the thunderbolt,) thou, Indra, didst slay afar off the deceiver named Namuki.

8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Parnaya with thy bright gleaming spear, in the cause of Atithigva: unaided, thou didst demolish the hundred cities of Vangrida, when besieged by Rigisvan.

9. Thou, renowned Indra, overthrewest by thy not-to-be-overtaken chariot-wheel, the twenty kings of men, who had come against Susravas, unaided, and their sixty thousand and ninety and nine followers.

10. Thou, Indra, hast preserved Susravas by thy succour, Turvayana, by thy assistance: thou hast made Kutsa, Atithigva, and Ayu subject to the mighty though youthful Susravas.

11. Protected by the gods, we remain, Indra, at the close of the sacrifice, thy most fortunate friends: we praise thee, as enjoying through thee excellent offspring, and a long and prosperous life.]

[Footnote 19: Favete linguis.]

[Footnote 20: Cf. Rv. I. 112, 25, 'dyubhir aktubhih,' by day and by night; also Rv. III. 31, 16. M. M., 'Todtenbestattung,' p. v.]

[Footnote 21: Professor Benfey reads durayantah, but all MSS. that I know, without exception, read darayantah.]

The next hymn is one of many addressed to Agni as the god of fire, not only the fire as a powerful element, but likewise the fire of the hearth and the altar, the guardian of the house, the minister of the sacrifice, the messenger between gods and men:

[Footnote 22: See Spiegel, 'Eran,' p. 269, on Khai Khosru = Susravas.]

HYMN TO AGNI (Rv. II. 6).

1. Agni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept this my service; listen well to these my songs.

2. With this log, O Agni, may we worship thee, thou son of strength, conqueror of horses! and with this hymn, thou high-born!

3. May we thy servants serve thee with songs, O granter of riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest in riches.

4. Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, be thou wise and powerful; drive away from us the enemies!

5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.

6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker, most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who worships thee and longs for thy help.

7. For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), like a friendly messenger between two hamlets.

8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased; perform thou, intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption, sit down on this sacred grass!

The following hymn, partly laudatory, partly deprecatory, is addressed to the Maruts or Rudras, the Storm-gods:

HYMN TO THE MARUTS (Rv. I. 39).[23]

1. When you thus from afar cast forward your measure, like a blast of fire, through whose wisdom is it, through whose design? To whom do you go, to whom, ye shakers (of the earth)?

2. May your weapons be firm to attack, strong also to withstand! May yours be the more glorious strength, not that of the deceitful mortal!

3. When you overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth, through the clefts of the rocks.

4. No real foe of yours is known in heaven, nor in earth, ye devourers of enemies! May strength be yours, together with your race, O Rudras, to defy even now.

5. They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the kings of the forest. Come on, Maruts, like madmen, ye gods, with your whole tribe.

6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariots, a red deer draws as leader. Even the earth listened at your approach, and men were frightened.

7. O Rudras, we quickly desire your help for our race. Come now to us with help, as of yore, thus for the sake of the frightened Kanva.

8. Whatever fiend, roused by you or roused by mortals, attacks us, tear him from us by your power, by your strength, by your aid.

9. For you, worshipful and wise, have wholly protected Kanva. Come to us, Maruts, with your whole help, as quickly as lightnings come after the rain.

10. Bounteous givers, ye possess whole strength, whole power, ye shakers (of the earth). Send, O Maruts, against the proud enemy of the poets, an enemy, like an arrow.

[Footnote 23: Professor Wilson translates as follows:

1. When, Maruts, who make (all things) tremble, you direct your awful (vigour) downwards from afar, as light (descends from heaven), by whose worship, by whose praise (are you attracted)? To what (place of sacrifice), to whom, indeed, do you repair?

2. Strong be your weapons for driving away (your) foes, firm in resisting them: yours be the strength that merits praise, not (the strength) of a treacherous mortal.

3. Directing Maruts, when you demolish what is stable, when you scatter what is ponderous, then you make your way through the forest (trees) of earth and the defiles of the mountains.

4. Destroyers of foes, no adversary of yours is known above the heavens, nor (is any) upon earth: may your collective strength be quickly exerted, sons of Rudra, to humble (your enemies).

5. They make the mountains tremble, they drive apart the forest trees. Go, divine Maruts, whither you will, with all your progeny, like those intoxicated.

6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariot; the red deer yoked between them, (aids to) drag the car: the firmament listens for your coming, and men are alarmed.

7. Rudras, we have recourse to your assistance for the sake of our progeny: come quickly to the timid Kanva, as you formerly came, for our protection.

8. Should any adversary, instigated by you, or by man, assail us, withhold from him food and strength and your assistance.

9. Praketasas, who are to be unreservedly worshipped, uphold (the sacrificer) Kanva: come to us, Maruts, with undivided protective assistances, as the lightnings (bring) the rain.

10. Bounteous givers, you enjoy unimpaired vigour: shakers (of the earth), you possess undiminished strength: Maruts, let loose your anger, like an arrow, upon the wrathful enemy of the Rishis. ]

The following is a simple prayer addressed to the Dawn:

HYMN TO USHAS (Rv. VII. 77).

1. She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by men, she made the light by striking down darkness.

2. She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows, (the mornings) the leader of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.

3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures, following every one.

4. Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety! Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.

5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.

6. Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the Vasishthas magnify with songs, give us riches high and wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.

I must confine myself to shorter extracts, in order to be able to show to you that all the principal elements of real religion are present in the Veda. I remind you again that the Veda contains a great deal of what is childish and foolish, though very little of what is bad and objectionable. Some of its poets ascribe to the gods sentiments and passions unworthy of the deity, such as anger, revenge, delight in material sacrifices; they likewise represent human nature on a low level of selfishness and worldliness. Many hymns are utterly unmeaning and insipid, and we must search patiently before we meet, here and there, with sentiments that come from the depth of the soul, and with prayers in which we could join ourselves. Yet there are such passages, and they are the really important passages, as marking the highest points to which the religious life of the ancient poets of India had reached; and it is to these that I shall now call your attention.

First of all, the religion of the Veda knows of no idols. The worship of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the more primitive worship of ideal gods.

The gods of the Veda are conceived as immortal: passages in which the birth of certain gods is mentioned have a physical meaning: they refer to the birth of the day, the rising of the sun, the return of the year.

The gods are supposed to dwell in heaven, though several of them, as, for instance, Agni, the god of fire, are represented as living among men, or as approaching the sacrifice, and listening to the praises of their worshippers.

Heaven and earth are believed to have been made or to have been established by certain gods. Elaborate theories of creation, which abound in the later works, the Brahmanas, are not to be found in the hymns. What we find are such passages as:

'Agni held the earth, he stablished the heaven by truthful words' (Rv. I. 67, 3).

'Varuna stemmed asunder the wide firmaments; he lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth' (Rv. VII. 86, 1).

More frequently, however, the poets confess their ignorance of the beginning of all things, and one of them exclaims:

'Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life, the blood, the soul of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? (Rv. I. 164, 4).[24]

Or again, Rv. X. 81, 4: 'What was the forest, what was the tree out of which they shaped heaven and earth? Wise men, ask this indeed in your mind, on what he stood when he held the worlds?'

I now come to a more important subject. We find in the Veda, what few would have expected to find there, the two ideas, so contradictory to the human understanding, and yet so easily reconciled in every human heart: God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, he punishes sin and rewards virtue, and yet the same God is willing to forgive; just, yet merciful; a judge, and yet a father. Consider, for instance, the following lines, Rv. I. 41, 4: 'His path is easy and without thorns, who does what is right.'

And again, Rv. I. 41, 9: 'Let man fear Him who holds the four (dice), before he throws them down (i. e. God who holds the destinies of men in his hand); let no man delight in evil words!'

And then consider the following hymns, and imagine the feelings which alone could have prompted them:

HYMN TO VARUNA (Rv. VII. 89).

1. Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

5. Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

[Footnote 24: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 20 note.]

And again, Rv. VII. 86:

1. Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth.

2. Do I say this to my own self? How can I get unto Varuna? Will he accept my offering without displeasure? When shall I, with a quiet mind, see him propitiated?

3. I ask, O Varuna, wishing to know this my sin. I go to ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same: Varuna it is who is angry with thee.

4. Was it an old sin, O Varuna, that thou wishest to destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with praise, freed from sin.

5. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those which we committed with our own bodies. Release Vasishtha, O king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release him like a calf from the rope.

6. It was not our own doing, O Varuna, it was necessity (or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young; even sleep brings unrighteousness.

7. Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry god, like a slave to the bounteous lord. The lord god enlightened the foolish; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper to wealth.

8. O lord Varuna, may this song go well to thy heart! May we prosper in keeping and acquiring! Protect us, O gods, always with your blessings!

The consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in the religion of the Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take away from man the heavy burden of his sins. And when we read such passages as 'Varuna is merciful even to him who has committed sin' (Rv. VII. 87, 7), we should surely not allow the strange name of Varuna to jar on our ears, but should remember that it is but one of the many names which men invented in their helplessness to express their ideas of the Deity, however partial and imperfect.

The next hymn, which is taken from the Atharva-veda (IV. 16), will show how near the language of the ancient poets of India may approach to the language of the Bible:[25]

1. The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near. If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it all.

2. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, king Varuna knows it, he is there as the third.

3. This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky and the ocean) are Varuna's loins; he is also contained in this small drop of water.

4. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of Varuna, the king. His spies proceed from heaven towards this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this earth.

5. King Varuna sees all this, what is between heaven and earth, and what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of the eyes of men. As a player throws the dice, he settles all things.

6. May all thy fatal nooses, which stand spread out seven by seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they pass by him who tells the truth.

[Footnote 25: This hymn was first pointed out by Professor Roth in a dissertation on the Atharva-veda (Tuebingen, 1856), and it has since been translated and annotated by Dr. Muir, in his article on the 'Vedic Theogony and Cosmogony,' p. 31.]

Another idea which we find in the Veda is that of faith: not only in the sense of trust in the gods, in their power, their protection, their kindness, but in that of belief in their existence. The Latin word credo, I believe, is the same as the Sanskrit sraddha, and this sraddha occurs in the Veda:

Rv. I. 102, 2. 'Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may see, Indra, and believe.'

Rv. I. 104, 6. 'Destroy not our future offspring, O Indra, for we have believed in thy great power.'

Rv. I. 55, 5. 'When Indra hurls again and again his thunderbolt, then they believe in the brilliant god.'[26]

[Footnote 26: During violent thunderstorms the natives of New Holland are so afraid of War-ru-gu-ra, the evil spirit, that they seek shelter even in caves haunted by Ingnas, subordinate demons, which at other times they would enter on no account. There, in silent terror, they prostrate themselves with their faces to the ground, waiting until the spirit, having expended his fury, shall retire to Uta (hell) without having discovered their hiding-place.—'Transactions of Ethnological Society,' vol. iii. p. 229. Oldfield, 'The Aborigines of Australia.']

A similar sentiment, namely, that men only believe in the gods when they see their signs and wonders in the sky, is expressed by another poet (Rv. VIII. 21, 14):

'Thou, Indra, never findest a rich man to be thy friend; wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when thou gatherest (the clouds), then thou art called, like a father.'

And with this belief in god, there is also coupled that doubt, that true scepticism, if we may so call it, which is meant to give to faith its real strength. We find passages even in these early hymns where the poet asks himself, whether there is really such a god as Indra,—a question immediately succeeded by an answer, as if given to the poet by Indra himself. Thus we read Rv. VIII. 89, 3:

'If you wish for strength, offer to Indra a hymn of praise: a true hymn, if Indra truly exist; for some one says, Indra does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?'

Then Indra answers through the poet:

'Here I am, O worshipper, behold me here! in might I surpass all things.'

Similar visions occur elsewhere, where the poet, after inviting a god to a sacrifice, or imploring his pardon for his offences, suddenly exclaims that he has seen the god, and that he feels that his prayer is granted. For instance:

HYMN TO VARUNA (Rv. I. 25).

1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are, O god, Varuna,

2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the furious; nor to the wrath of the spiteful!

3. To propitiate thee, O Varuna, we unbend thy mind with songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.

4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only on gaining wealth; as birds to their nests.

5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is victory to the warriors; when shall we bring Varuna, the wide-seeing, to be propitiated?

[6. This they (Mitra and Varuna) take in common; gracious, they never fail the faithful giver.]

7. He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the sky, who on the waters knows the ships;—

8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is engendered afterwards;—

9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the bright, the mighty; and knows those who reside on high;—

10. He, the upholder of order, Varuna, sits down among his people; he, the wise, sits there to govern.

11. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has been and what will be done.

12. May he, the wise Aditya, make our paths straight all our days; may he prolong our lives!

13. Varuna, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining cloak; the spies sat down around him.

14. The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mischief;—

15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who gives it even to our own selves;—

16. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move onwards, as kine move to their pastures.

17. Let us speak together again, because my honey has been brought: that thou mayst eat what thou likest, like a friend.

18. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see the chariot above the earth? He must have accepted my prayers.

19. O hear this my calling, Varuna, be gracious now; longing for help, I have called upon thee.

20. Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth: listen on thy way.

21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the middle, and remove the lowest!

In conclusion, let me tell you that there is in the Veda no trace of metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the sine qua non of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss. We cannot wonder at the great difficulties felt and expressed by bishop Warburton and other eminent divines, with regard to the supposed total absence of the doctrine of immortality or personal immortality in the Old Testament; and it is equally startling that the Sadducees who sat in the same council with the high-priest, openly denied the resurrection.[27] However, though not expressly asserted anywhere, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in several passages of the Old Testament, and we can hardly think of Abraham or Moses as without a belief in life and immortality. But while this difficulty, so keenly felt with regard to the Jewish religion, ought to make us careful in the judgments which we form of other religions, and teach us the wisdom of charitable interpretation, it is all the more important to mark that in the Veda passages occur where immortality of the soul, personal immortality and personal responsibility after death, are clearly proclaimed. Thus we read:

[Footnote 27: Acts xxii. 30, xxiii. 6.]

'He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he goes to the gods' (Rv. I. 125, 56).

Another poet, after rebuking those who are rich and do not communicate, says:

'The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven!'

Even the idea, so frequent in the later literature of the Brahmans, that immortality is secured by a son, seems implied, unless our translation deceives us, in one passage of the Veda (VII. 56, 24): 'Asme (iti) virah marutah sushmi astu gananam yah asurah vi dharta, apah yena su-kshitaye tarema, adha svam okah abhi vah syama.' 'O Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living ruler of men: through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the happy abode; then may we come to your own house!'

One poet prays that he may see again his father and mother after death (Rv. I. 24, 1); and the fathers (Pitris) are invoked almost like gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are believed to enjoy, in company with the gods, a life of never ending felicity (Rv. X. 15, 16).

We find this prayer addressed to Soma (Rv. IX. 113, 7):

'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O Soma!'

'Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal!

'Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!'

'Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me immortal!

'Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal!'[28]

Whether the old Rishis believed likewise in a place of punishment for the wicked, is more doubtful, though vague allusions to it occur in the Rig-veda, and more distinct descriptions are found in the Atharva-veda. In one verse it is said that the dead is rewarded for his good deeds, that he leaves or casts off all evil, and glorified takes his body (Rv. X. 14, 8).[29] The dogs of Yama, the king of the departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect the departed from them (Rv. X. 14, 11). Again, a pit (karta) is mentioned into which the lawless are said to be hurled down (Rv. IX. 73, 8), and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices (Rv. I. 121, 13). One poet prays that the Adityas may preserve him from the destroying wolf, and from falling into the pit (Rv. II. 29, 6). In one passage we read that 'those who break the commandments of Varuna and who speak lies are born for that deep place' (Rv. IV. 5, 5).[30]

[Footnote 28: Professor Roth, after quoting several passages from the Veda in which a belief in immortality is expressed, remarks with great truth: 'We here find, not without astonishment, beautiful conceptions on immortality expressed in unadorned language with child-like conviction. If it were necessary, we might here find the most powerful weapons against the view which has lately been revived, and proclaimed as new, that Persia was the only birthplace of the idea of immortality, and that even the nations of Europe had derived it from that quarter. As if the religious spirit of every gifted race was not able to arrive at it by its own strength.'—('Journal of the German Oriental Society,' vol. iv. p. 427.) See Dr. Muir's article on Yama, in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' p. 10.]

[Footnote 29: M. M., Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen 'Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft,' vol. ix. p. xii.]

[Footnote 30: Dr. Muir, article on Yama, p. 18.]

Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life. No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism, will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.

Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:

1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.

2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after Him, to find Him in their hour of need.

3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we have in our own religion. No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'



II.

CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.[31]

In so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the principles according to which the religions of the world should be judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the religions of India. We find there, first of all, a short but very clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic poems, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The next chapter is devoted to the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr. Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion, and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of Buddhism, and the later Puranas. All these questions are handled with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence, that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India. The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year, is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of Eastern civilisation, Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America, and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea, and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of the Malayo-Polynesians.

[Footnote 31: 'Christ and other Masters.' An Historical Inquiry into some of the chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World, with special reference to prevailing Difficulties and Objections. By Charles Hardwick, M.A., Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Parts I, II, III. Cambridge, 1858.]

The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself, must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume, have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'

We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with—a man brought up in the faith of his fathers, accustomed to call his god or gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood—a man who had derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these gods—who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid of the anger of a Divine Being—who had performed severe penance, because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods—who had given, not only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they might pray for him or absolve him from his sin—if, in discussing any of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do, and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel, that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin to think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates wrangling for victory—we are no longer tranquil observers, compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is born blind—we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist on the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith, except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans, or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can, how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies hidden somewhere—a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language, because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter that their systems are mere rechauffes of ancient heathenism. Thus he says, in his introduction to the third volume:

'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to recognise the proper tendency of certain current speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science, and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us. Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf, those theories are little more than a return to long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes; or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class of China, for example, have long been familiar with the metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible scale. For ages they have been what people of the present day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral status of his subjects by the study of political science, or devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral imbecility.'

Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity, and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call of the priest—nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a better life—they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth. Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife, or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or for his country—he does it because he knows that every one would do the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we must take into account their national character. Nations who value life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow would do—she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernath, to be crushed to death by the idol they believe in—where the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his judge—where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity, quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore of existence—in such a country, however much we may condemn these practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life—let him once consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from whence he came—and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation, sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality. They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures, which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians, for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of the Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren, relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope, made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her sons, who took hold of it and strangled her—after which she was put into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham; and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their religion.

It is among these tribes that the missionary, if he can speak a language which they understand, gains the most rapid influence. But he must first learn himself to understand the nature of these savages, and to translate the wild yells of their devotion into articulate language. There is, perhaps, no race of men so low and degraded as the Papuas. It has frequently been asserted they had no religion at all. And yet these same Papuas, if they want to know whether what they are going to undertake is right or wrong, squat before their karwar, clasp the hands over the forehead, and bow repeatedly, at the same time stating their intentions. If they are seized with any nervous feeling during this process, it is considered as a bad sign, and the project is abandoned for a time—if otherwise, the idol is supposed to approve. Here we have but to translate what they in their helpless language call 'nervous feeling' by our word 'conscience,' and we shall not only understand what they really mean, but confess, perhaps, that it would be well for us if in our own hearts the karwar occupied the same prominent place which it occupies in the cottage of every Papua.

March, 1858.



III.

THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.

THE VEDA.

The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse these adventurous Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness, to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves—to take a road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again who speak our language and worship our gods—is a course which only men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of Iran.

At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes migrating across the snow of the Himalaya southward towards the 'Seven Rivers' (the Indus, the five rivers of the Penjab, and the Sarasvati), and ever since India has been called their home. That before this time they had been living in more northern regions, within the same precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians, Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors whether Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not yet peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors were the same as those of king Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood might be running in his veins and in the veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claim of a common descent and a spiritual relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live in India and in England that have witnessed the first separation of the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears, for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.

It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German differ from all the rest, and as no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan heirloom—whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends—it is natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.

The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.

But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow passes of the Hindukush or the Himalaya, they conquered or drove before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their guides the principal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the peninsula. None of the great conquerors of antiquity,—Sesostris, Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus,—disturbed the peaceful seats of these Aryan settlers. Left to themselves in a world of their own, without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also. Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of rain has passed over it; his character remained the same, passive, meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. A people of this peculiar stamp was never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world; nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas in which they lived could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and moral character of the Indians. Social and political virtues were little cultivated, and the ideas of the useful and the beautiful hardly known to them. With all this, however, they had, what the Greek was as little capable of imagining, as they were of realising the elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of thought and rest. The ancient Hindus were a nation of philosophers, such as could nowhere have existed except in India, and even there in early times alone. It is with the Hindu mind as if a seed were placed in a hothouse. It will grow rapidly, its colours will be gorgeous, its perfume rich, its fruits precocious and abundant. But never will it be like the oak growing in wind and weather, and striking its roots into real earth, and stretching its branches into real air beneath the stars and the sun of heaven. Both are experiments, the hothouse flower and the Hindu mind; and as experiments, whether physiological or psychological, both deserve to be studied.

We may divide the whole Aryan family into two branches, the northern and the southern. The northern nations, Celts, Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Slavonians, have each one act allotted to them on the stage of history. They have each a national character to support. Not so the southern tribes. They are absorbed in the struggles of thought, their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of existence; and the present, which ought to be the solution of both, seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth is to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though this is said chiefly with reference to them before they were brought in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still visible in the Hindus, as described by the companions of Alexander, nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to worship, is the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deep in the mind of a nation as in India. The shape which these ideas took amongst the different classes of society, and at different periods of civilisation, naturally varies from coarse superstition to sublime spiritualism. But, taken as a whole, history supplies no second instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed all the other faculties of a people.

It was natural, therefore, that the literary works of such a nation, when first discovered in Sanskrit MSS. by Wilkins, Sir W. Jones, and others, should have attracted the attention of all interested in the history of the human race. A new page in man's biography was laid open, and a literature as large as that of Greece or Rome was to be studied. The Laws of Manu, the two epic poems, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the six complete systems of philosophy, works on astronomy and medicine, plays, stories, fables, elegies, and lyrical effusions, were read with intense interest, on account of their age not less than their novelty.

Still this interest was confined to a small number of students, and in a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who, from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature. Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of strong originality and genius.

There is, however, one period of Sanskrit literature which forms an exception, and which will maintain its place in the history of mankind, when the name of Kalidasa and Sakuntala will have been long forgotten. It is the most ancient period, the period of the Veda. There is, perhaps, a higher degree of interest attaching to works of higher antiquity; but in the Veda we have more than mere antiquity. We have ancient thought expressed in ancient language. Without insisting on the fact that even chronologically the Veda is the first book of the Aryan nations, we have in it, at all events, a period in the intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other part of the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world. We see him crawling on like a creature of the earth with all the desires and weaknesses of his animal nature. Food, wealth, and power, a large family and a long life, are the theme of his daily prayers. But he begins to lift up his eyes. He stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He opens his ears to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily pittance of his existence, he calls 'his life, his breath, his brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of nature, and after he has called the fire Agni, the sun-light Indra, the storms Maruts, and the dawn Ushas, they all seem to grow naturally into beings like himself, nay, greater than himself. He invokes them, he praises them, he worships them. But still with all these gods around him, beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at rest within himself. There too, in his own breast, he has discovered a power that wants a name, a power nearer to him than all the gods of nature, a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is Brahman; for brahman meant originally force, will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal brahman, too, as soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not expressed. At last he calls it Atman; for atman, originally breath or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone—Self whether divine or human, Self whether creating or suffering, Self whether one or all, but always Self, independent and free. 'Who has seen the first-born,' says the poet, 'when he who has no bones (i. e. form) bore him that had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it?' (Rv.I. 164, 4). This idea of a divine Self once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its supremacy, 'Self is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self.[32] Brahman itself is but Self.'[33]

[Footnote 32: Brihad-aranyaka, IV. 5, 15 ed. Roer, p. 487.]

[Footnote 33: Ibid. p. 478. Khandogya-upanishad, VIII. 3, 3-4.]

This Atman also grew; but it grew, as it were, without attributes. The sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1), and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But Atman remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from the Brahman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is worshipped as Brahman (masculine), together with Vishnu and Siva, and other popular gods. The idea of the Atman or Self, like a pure crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed over to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it as the medium through which all is seen, and in which all is reflected and known. But philosophy is later than the Veda, and it is of the Vaidik period only I have here to speak.[34]

[Footnote 34: In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as brahman, atman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that brahman, neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Brahmanas. There we read of 'the oldest or greatest Brahman which rules everything that has been or will be.' Heaven is said to belong to Brahman alone (Atharva-veda X. 8, 1). In the Brahmanas, this Brahman is called the first-born, the self-existing, the best of the gods, and heaven and earth are said to have been established by it. Even the vital spirits are identified with it (Satapatha-brahmana VIII. 4, 9, 3).

In other passages, again, this same Brahman is represented as existing in man (Atharva-veda X. 7, 17), and in this very passage we can watch the transition from the neutral Brahman into Brahman, conceived of as a masculine:

Ye purushe brahma vidus te viduh parameshthinam, Yo veda parameshthinam, yas ka veda pragapatim, Gyeshtham ye brahmanam vidus, te skambham anu samviduh.

'They who know Brahman in man, they know the Highest, He who knows the Highest, and he who knows Pragapati (the lord of creatures), And they who know the oldest Brahmana, they know the Ground.'

The word Brahmana which is here used, is a derivative form of Brahman; but what is most important in these lines is the mixing of neuter and masculine words, of impersonal and personal deities. This process is brought to perfection by changing Brahman, the neuter, even grammatically into Brahman, a masculine,—a change which has taken place in the Aranyakas, where we find Brahman used as the name of a male deity. It is this Brahman, with the accent on the first, not, as has been supposed, brahman, the priest, that appears again in the later literature as one of the divine triad, Brahman, Vishnu, Siva.

The word brahman, as a neuter, is used in the Rig-veda in the sense of prayer also, originally what bursts forth from the soul, and, in one sense, what is revealed. Hence in later times brahman is used collectively for the Veda, the sacred word.

Another word, with the accent on the last syllable, is brahman, the man who prays, who utters prayers, the priest, and gradually the Brahman by profession. In this sense it is frequently used in the Rig-veda (I. 108, 7), but not yet in the sense of Brahman by birth or caste.]

In the Veda, then, we can study a theogony of which that of Hesiod is but the last chapter. We can study man's natural growth, and the results to which it may lead under the most favourable conditions. All was given him that nature can bestow. We see him blest with the choicest gifts of the earth, under a glowing and transparent sky, surrounded by all the grandeur and all the riches of nature, with a language 'capable of giving soul to the objects of sense, and body to the abstractions of metaphysics.' We have a right to expect much from him, only we must not expect in his youthful poems the philosophy of the nineteenth century, or the beauties of Pindar, or, with some again, the truths of Christianity. Few understand children, still fewer understand antiquity. If we look in the Veda for high poetical diction, for striking comparisons, for bold combinations, we shall be disappointed. These early poets thought more for themselves than for others. They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own thought than to please the imagination of their hearers. With them it was a great work achieved for the first time to bind thoughts and words together, to find expressions or to form new names. As to similes, we must look to the words themselves, which, if we compare their radical and their nominal meaning, will be found full of bold metaphors. No translation in any modern language can do them justice. As to beauty, we must discover it in the absence of all effort, and in the simplicity of their hearts. Prose was, at that time, unknown, as well as the distinction between prose and poetry. It was the attempted imitation of those ancient natural strains of thought which in later times gave rise to poetry in our sense of the word, that is to say, to poetry as an art, with its counted syllables, its numerous epithets, its rhyme and rhythm, and all the conventional attributes of 'measured thought.'

In the Veda itself, however—even if by Veda we mean the Rig-veda only (the other three, the Saman, Yagush, and Atharvana, having solely a liturgical interest, and belonging to an entirely different sphere)—in the Rig-veda also, we find much that is artificial, imitated, and therefore modern, if compared with other hymns. It is true that all the 1017 hymns of the Rig-veda were comprised in a collection which existed as such before one of those elaborate theological commentaries, known under the name of Brahmana, was written, that is to say, about 800 B.C. But before the date of their collection these must have existed for centuries. In different songs the names of different kings occur, and we see several generations of royal families pass away before us with different generations of poets. Old songs are mentioned, and new songs. Poets whose compositions we possess are spoken of as the seers of olden times; their names in other hymns are surrounded by a legendary halo. In some cases, whole books or chapters may be pointed out as more modern and secondary, in thought and language. But on the whole the Rig-veda is a genuine document, even in its most modern portions not later than the time of Lycurgus; and it exhibits one of the earliest and rudest phases in the history of mankind; disclosing in its full reality a period of which in Greece we have but traditions and names, such as Orpheus and Linus, and bringing us as near the beginnings in language, thought, and mythology as literary documents can ever bring us in the Aryan world.

Though much time and labour have been spent on the Veda, in England and in Germany, the time is not yet come for translating it as a whole. It is possible and interesting to translate it literally, or in accordance with scholastic commentaries, such as we find in India from Yaska in the fifth century B.C. down to Sayana in the fourteenth century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his work a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has almost been mastered; the etymology and the meaning of many words, unknown in the later Sanskrit, have been discovered. Many hymns, which are mere prayers for food, for cattle, or for a long life, have been translated, and can leave no doubt as to their real intention. But with the exception of these simple petitions, the whole world of Vedic ideas is so entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon, that instead of translating we can as yet only guess and combine. Here it is no longer a mere question of skilful deciphering. We may collect all the passages where an obscure word occurs, we may compare them and look for a meaning which would be appropriate to all; but the difficulty lies in finding a sense which we can appropriate, and transfer by analogy into our own language and thought. We must be able to translate our feelings and ideas into their language at the same time that we translate their poems and prayers into our language. We must not despair even where their words seem meaningless and their ideas barren or wild. What seems at first childish may at a happier moment disclose a sublime simplicity, and even in helpless expressions we may recognise aspirations after some high and noble idea. When the scholar has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish it. Let the scholar collect, collate, sift, and reject—let him say what is possible or not according to the laws of the Vaidik language—let him study the commentaries, the Sutras, the Brahmanas, and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which information can be derived. He must not despise the tradition of the Brahmans, even where their misconceptions and the causes of their misconceptions are palpable. To know what a passage cannot mean is frequently the key to its real meaning; and whatever reasons may be pleaded for declining a careful perusal of the traditional interpretations of Yaska or Sayana, they can all be traced back to an ill-concealed argumentum paupertatis. Not a corner in the Brahmanas, the Sutras, Yaska, and Sayana should be left unexplored before we venture to propose a rendering of our own. Sayana, though the most modern, is on the whole the most sober interpreter. Most of his etymological absurdities must be placed to Yaska's account, and the optional renderings which he allows for metaphysical, theological, or ceremonial purposes, are mostly due to his regard for the Brahmanas. The Brahmanas, though nearest in time to the hymns of the Rig-veda, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged interpretations. When the ancient Rishi exclaims with a troubled heart, 'Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by our songs?'—the author of the Brahmana sees in the interrogative pronoun 'Who' some divine name, a place is allotted in the sacrificial invocations to a god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called 'Whoish' hymns. To make such misunderstandings possible, we must assume a considerable interval between the composition of the hymns and the Brahmanas. As the authors of the Brahmanas were blinded by theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their authority later and more sensible commentators, such as Sayana. Where Sayana has no authority to mislead him, his commentary is at all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never allow him to accept the free interpretation which a comparative study of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient poets; and if we follow them cautiously, we shall find that with some effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps. We shall feel that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and kingdoms and battles, but old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old errors, the old Man altogether—old now, but then young and fresh, and simple and real in his prayers and in his praises.

The thoughtful bent of the Hindu mind is visible in the Veda also, but his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H. T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the doubts and sorrows of their heart.

Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above. What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed? Was it the water's fathomless abyss? There was not death—yet was there nought immortal, There was no confine betwixt day and night; The only One breathed breathless by itself, Other than It there nothing since has been. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound—an ocean without light— The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat. Then first came love upon it, the new spring Of mind—yea, poets in their hearts discerned, Pondering, this bond between created things And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven? Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose— Nature below, and power and will above— Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here, Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang? The Gods themselves came later into being— Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? He from whom all this great creation came, Whether his will created or was mute, The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, He knows it—or perchance even He knows not.

The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin. Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is nisa, which is a form peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with nox nor with [Greek: nyx]. The Vaidik nas or nak, night, is as near to Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is mushas or mushika, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris. The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the plural mush-as = Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeus. Ushas, dawn, again in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even the secondary Vaidik form Ushasa is proved to be of high antiquity by the nearly corresponding Latin form Aurora. Declension and conjugation are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the common Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.

October, 1853.

THE ZEND-AVESTA.

By means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters, discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German, and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 A.D., and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of the Achaemenians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods—all now rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.

The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer—not of a scholar. Rask was the first who, with the materials collected by Duperron and himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He proved—

1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W. Erskine, but that it differed from it as Greek, Latin, or Lithuanian differed from one another and from Sanskrit.

2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend as Italian was from Latin; and

3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zoroaster, must have been reduced to writing at least previously to Alexander's conquest. The opinion that Zend was an artificial language (an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental philology, beginning with Sir W. Jones) is passed over by Rask as not deserving of refutation.

The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian writings, were the work of the late Eugene Burnouf. He was the real founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants, nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penjab, together with the Indus, and the Sarasvati.

Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where it becomes hazanra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove that these two languages continued together long after they were separated from the common Indo-European stock.

Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had once been united.

Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the Sanskrit word khandas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35] which is the name given to the language of the Veda by Panini and others. When we read in Panini's grammar that certain forms occur in khandas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always translate the word khandas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply equally to the language of the Avesta.

[Footnote 35: The derivation of khandas, metre, from the same root which yielded the Latin scandere, seems to me still the most plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word, proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's 'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial kh in Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am aware, been denied. (Curtius, 'Grundzuege,' p. 60.) The fact that the root khand, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of language by so ancient a scholar as Yaska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That scandere in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes tripodaverunt in verba haec: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No. 2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps ([Greek: pous], pes, Sanskrit pad or pada; padapankti, a row of feet, and gagati, i. e. andante, are names of Sanskrit metres). It is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit khandas, i. e. skandas, and if we find that scando in Latin (from which sca(d)la), as we may gather from ascendo and descendo, meant originally striding, and that skand in Sanskrit means the same as scando in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. khandas. Hindu grammarians derive khandas either from khad, to cover, or from khad, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic interpretation of the theologians of the Khandogas, who tell us that the metres were called khandas because the gods, when afraid of death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the Vagasaneyins, who tell us that the khandas were so called because they pleased Pragapati? Such artificial interpretations only show that the Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much that has been written on the etymology of khandas, a most happy remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to the same root as the Sanskrit khandas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,' vol. iii. p. 428.)]