The Rig-Veda-Samhita

The word samhitd means “ collection.” It is  here used to denote the collection of original Mantras (hymns, sacred texts), 1 1028 in number, which compose the Rig-Veda, free of all additions in the of explanations, commentaries, and the like. This is, without the shadow of a doubt, the oldest book of the Aryan family of nations,—in contents if not in actual tangible shape, for writing did not come into use for centuries after even the latest of the Rig-hymns had finally assumed the poetical garb in which they have come down to us, and which cannot have been later than 1000 B.C., while it was probably much earlier. And when close study of the hymns has given us the training necessary to discern, from intrinsic evidence of language and matter, the oldest portions even of this stupendous collection,—most probably about 1500 B.C. and rather earlier than later,—we are forced to the admission (for which, however, we are not unprepared, having already had glimpses, beyond the Indo-Eranian period, of a primeval or Proto-Aryan era)* that many, both of the words and the conceptions that confront us there, already mark a secondary stage of development and are the result of historical growth.

Earliest religious life of the Aryas in India.

The Rishis.

The earliest religious- life of the Penjab Arya and its outer forms, as they can still faintly be traced here and there through the later complications of the Rig-Veda, are beautifully simple—almost entirely family worship. The head of the household is also its spiritual representative and leader ; he lights the flame of the daily sacrifice, which he feeds with the simple offering of melted butter and cakes, singing the appropriate hymns. But this latter feature already contained the germ of a much more artificial state of things. What were appropriate hymns? The selection implies a form, a ritual. The 1028 songs are divided into ten separate books or collections (mandalas ) some of them subdivided into smaller groups, the authorship (more probably compilation) of each being ascribed to some particularly renowned saintly poet-priest—Rishi—of olden times. The historical authenticity of these names is of course more than doubtful, as they became, in the course of time, encrusted with such a growth of myth and legend as to leave almost no loophole for anything like sober, reasonable conjecture. On the whole, it may be assumed, with no small degree of probability, that behind these names would be found not only individuals, but also whole families in successive generations, in which both priesthood and poetic gifts were hereditary. It is these families whowill have made the selections and gradually established the more and more systematized forms of worship which, by the time the Aryan conquest and colonization had, in their steady eastward progress, reached the valleys of the Upper Ganga and Yamuna, had expanded into the most elaborate and intricate ritual and sacrificial ceremonial the world has ever known, in the hands of an exclusive and privileged priesthood, who, under their final name of BRAHMANS, had in the interval grown into that all-powerful caste, which, for nearly thirty centuries, has held India prostrate—the most perfect theocracy of any land or age, possibly rivaled only by the Egyptian.

The Yajur-Veda and the Sama-Veda.

Where there is a liturgy, there needs must be prayer-books. Such was the origin and such the use of two other samhitas or collections included among the sacred books under the titles of YAJURVeda and Sama-Veda. Both consist of hymns and fragments of hymns (mantras, “ texts”) taken out of the Rig, and arranged in a certain order so as to accompany each action and incident of any given religious service, and especially sacrifices—these latter in particular having become so numerous and varied as to require the ministrations of a great many priests,—on solemn occasions as many as seventeen,— of unequal rank and having entirely different, very strictly prescribed and limited duties. Some are to mutter their mantras, some to recite them rapidly and moderately loud, others to intone, and others again to sing them. The mantras of the Saman, which can be traced to the Rig with a very few exceptions—78 out of 1 549—are all to be chanted. Those of the Yajur mostly come from the same source, but are interspersed with passages in prose, containing explanations and directions for the guidance of the priests who make use of this liturgical manual. 1 They are grouped in two uneven halve or parts—the “ Black Yaju ” (Taittiriya SamhitA) and the “White Yaju” (VAJASANEYA SamhitA)— an arrangement insufficiently accounted for by a very grotesque legend.

The Atharva-Veda.

For a long time these three Samhitds—the Rig, the Yaju, and the Saman—the bulk of them in reality reducible to only one, the Rig, 1—formed the entire body of sacred lore, under the collective title of Traividya, i. e., “the threefold Veda,” or “ the threefold knowledge.” It was only at a considerably later period, for which no precise date can be suggested, that a fourth one was incorporated in the sacred canon—the Atharva-Veda. It may therefore, in one way, be called a comparatively modern addition. Yet in another it may probably may claim, at least in part, to a higher antiquity than even the Rig-hymns. Nothing could well be imagined more different in contents and more opposite in spirit than these two samhitds. That of the Atharvan contains a comparatively small number of mantras from the Rig, and those only from the portions unanimously recognized as the latest, while the bulk of the collection along with some original hymns of the same kind and, in many cases, of great poetic beauty, consists chiefly of incantations, spells, exorcisms. We have here, as though in opposition to the bright, cheerful pantheon of beneficent deities, so trustingly and gratefully addressed by the Rishis of the Rig, a weird, repulsive world of darkly scowling demons, inspiring abject fear, such as never sprang from Aryan fancy. We find ourselves in the midst of a goblin-worship, the exact counterpart of that with which we became familiar in Turanian Chaldea.  Every evil thing in nature, from a drought to a fever or bad qualities of the human heart, is personified and made the object of terror-stricken propitiation, or of attempts at circumvention through witchcraft, or the instrument of harm to others through the same compelling force. Here as there, worship takes the form of conjuring, not prayer; its ministers are sorcerers, not priests. The conclusion almost forces itself on us, that this collection represents the religion of the native races, who, through a compromise dictated by policy after a long period of struggle, ending in submission, obtained for it partial recognition from the conquering and every way superior race. It is easy to see how the latter, while condescending to incorporate the long abhorred ritual into their own canonical books, probably at first in some subordinate capacity, would, so to speak, sanctify or purify it, by supplementing it with some new hymns of their own, addressed to the same deities as those of the Rig and breathing the same spirit . If, as is more than probable, this is the history of the fourth Veda, the manner of its creation justifies the seemingly paradoxical assertion that it is at once the most modern of the four, and, in portions,more ancient than even the oldest parts of the Rig-Veda. As a samhita, it is a manifestly late production,since it bears evidence of having been in use in the valleys of the Ganga and the Yamuna; but the portions which embody an originally non-Aryan religion are evidently anterior to Aryan occupation.

The text of the Rig-Veda Memorizing.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the mantras of the Yajur and the Saman are reproduced from the Rig-Veda with absolutely literal accuracy.Indeed this is far from being the case, and although there never is any difficulty in identifying the texts, a careful collation of them shows many, at times quite considerable, discrepancies. This fact is veryeasily accounted for. The oldest known manuscript of the Rig-Veda do not date back much earlier than 1500 A.D. Yet, two thousand years before that, about 600 B.C., the study of it, exclusively pursued in several theological schools, by the simple but arduous process of memorizing, was so accurate and minute that, with a view to establish the text and prevent interpolations, every verse, word, and syllable had been counted. From treatises written at that period we learn that the number of the words is 153,826, that of the syllables 432,000, while that of the verses is differently computed and varies from 10,402 to 10,622. Now it is quite possible, as everyone may find out by trying on a passage of either prose or verse, to alter a quotation, without materially injuring the sense, by changing some of the words and substituting others of the same length, so that the ear will detect no difference. Indeed this often happens when quotations are made from memory. How easily would such corruptions occur where there was no written standard of the canonical text to check and correct them ! The wonder—a* great, standing wonder—is that the text was preserved so unimpaired, on the whole and in detail. But where deviations did occur, of course each particular school would not admit them, but stood by its own text as being the only pure one, and thus it came to pass that we have several versions of the Rig-Veda slightly differing in details. Furthermore, when the Rig mantras were arranged in liturgical order as prayer-books or sacrificial manuals for the priests, the compilers might slightly adapt them to this or that action of the ritual, and all these causes more than account for the divergences in the samhitas of the Yajur-Veda and the Sama-Veda.

Necessity of commentaries.

To be studied with such exceeding care, to have its every syllable numbered and treasured as so many crumbs of gold, a book must needs be, not only sacred, but old. The fear of losing some of the spiritual wealth is closely followed by that of losing the full appreciation of it—of ceasing to understand it. Then begins the period of commentaries. Everything has to be explained. The language has become antiquated. The poetic metres—very rich and varied in the Rig-Veda—are out of use, and must be studied laboriously as we study those of our dead languages. Allusions to once familiar things are no longer understood. Myths are lost track of ; their true meaning is forgot. Names that once were household words and told their own tale, have become empty sounds. In short, times have changed and the thread is broken. On the other hand, these new times must be anchored on to the old. All these new things—new notions, new customs, new laws, new rites, new social conditions—must be accounted for, justified, consecrated by the old, now almost unintelligible, for these are the sole, universally acknowledged, holy fountain-head of the entire national life—social and spiritual. It will be easily seen what a feat of intellectual gymnastics such a task must have been, nor will it be wondered at that there was enough of it to keep several generations of priestly specialists occupied. The beginning was made with the prose passages intermixed with the mantras of the Yajur-Veda, and which converted that compilation into a manual for uses that had not been contemplated by the old Rishis, but had gradually grown out of sundry slender roots which twined their nearly invisible threads below the bare surface of the ancient simple worship.

The Brahmanas.

Such was the origin and purport of the numerous theological works which, under the name of Brahmanas (composed by Brahmans and for the use of Brahmans), formed the staple literature of the Aryan Hindus through several centuries, belonging as distinctively to the second stage of their establishment in the northern half of the Himalayan continent, that gravitating around the Upper Ganga and Yamuna, as the early portions of the Rig-Veda belonged to the first stage, with the Sindh for the main artery of their material life. In this way the Brahmanas mark the transition from Vedic culture to the later Brahmanic social order and modes of thought—indeed help to bring on that transition, some evidently belonging to the beginning, others to the end of that intercalary period. As was but natural, this work gave rise to numerous theological schools, each of which jealously guarded and handed down its own version of this or that Brahmana, just as was the case with the Vedas themselves. This of course materially increases the difficulties that beset our students, especially when one remembers that each of the four Vedas had several Brahmanas attached to it. Many are lost, or not yet found, but it is doubtful whether they would add much valuable knowledge to that imparted by those which are open to our inspection, the survivors naturally being the most important and popular works. Perhaps the most interesting portion of each Brahmana is the appendix with which each is supplied, under the title of Aranyaka —“ belonging to the forest ”—for the use of such Brahmans as had retired from the world into forest hermitages, to spend there a few quiet years, or the  latter end of their lives. Four Aranyakas are known to us.