VEADAR. 



VKDA. 



vassals and ranuxm, and other his liege-nxo, from their oaths of portion of the Vedu is therefore the foundation of the Vaidik ritual, 



.. * 1 * * II 1 I 1 . . 1 A 1 ' - Al-_ 



fidelity (3 Hot Purl., 416) ; and about the MUM period Chaucer, after 

 describing his Franklin, my*, 



" Wu no where nriehe a worthy roivuow." 



From this time we loee light of the English vavassor. Numerous 

 nibeeigniories however still exist, the owners of which, though not so 

 designated, are in truth vavassors. From the inalienable quality of 

 the Duchy of Cornwall, many manors in Devonshire and Cornwall are 

 held, though the name is no longer continued, as vavassories of the 

 duchy ; of which there are many in the former comity, holdcn of the 

 duchy honour of Bnulnim li. 



The breaking up of the old feudal baronies, and the frequent , 

 forfeitures incurred by those who held immediately of the crown, 

 brought the great and many of the lesser vavaasor* into the position of 

 immediate tenants to the crown. lint as the extinction of vavassories 

 was gradual, no new class of crown tenants arose, as was the case in 

 Germany where the disappearance of the dukedoms of Suabia and 

 Franconia (caused by the extinction of the House of Hohenstauffen in 

 the person of Conradin, beheaded upon the failure of hi* attempt to 

 recover the kingdom of Naples from Charles of Anjou), gave rise to a 

 new order in the state, namely, the jmmrdiatt chivalry (noblesse 

 immediate) of the empire, the reichsriUerschaft, a body mtdiatited by 

 the Congress of Vienna. 



When James I., imitating the practice of France, introduced 

 hereditary titles without peerages, a proposal for giving' to the new 

 order the designation of varassors was rejected, and the novel but 

 more appropriate title of BABONET was adopted. 



(Terrien, Cont, de Normandit ; Tata de KeviU, 166 a ; Seldcn'e Titltt 

 of Honour, 613, 520 ; Cragii, Jtu. Feud., 100. 141 ; Manning's Sen-lent 

 adLegem, 185, 291 a.) 



VEADAR. The name of this month is literally "and A.lar." mean- 

 ing " another Adar." It occurs only in intercalary years, immediately 

 after Adar. [ADAR.] This month has twenty-nine days, and the feast 

 of Purim and fast of Esther, usually observed in the month Adar, 

 are transferred to Veadar in the rears where this month U inserted. 

 The last time of this insertion was in 1859, when Veadar began on 

 the 7th of March and ended on the 4th of April. The next will be in 

 1S62, when it will extend from the 3rd to the 31st of March. 



VKDA. This word (from the Sanskrit radical rid, 'to know' 

 kindred with the Latin rid-, Greek i!-, Gothic rait) literally means 

 ' knowing,' or ' knowledge ; ' but is emphatic illy used OB the name of 

 those ancient Sanskrit works which constitute the basis of Brahiu.iuic 

 U'lief, and are held by the Hindus to have been revealed to them by 

 their deities. These works were originally three, namely, the Rigttda, 

 the Yajurrtda, and the Samaveda. At a more recent period a fourth 

 Veda was added to them, but it never obtained that degree of sanctity 

 which was allowed to its predecessors ; it is not mentioned, for instance, 

 in the niuth verse of the Piirusha-sukta of the R'igveda, which speaks of 

 the R'ig-, Sama-,aud Yajur-veda; nor in the Chhandogya-Upanishad ; 

 nor even in the law book of Manuj for though the latter refers on 

 ccveral occasions to the three Vedas, it speaks only once (xL 83) of 

 " the revelations of the AtharvangiraBas," by this expression alluding to, 

 but not naming by name, the Atharvaveda; and even the writers on the 

 Mim&nsa, a doctrine that has for iU object to clear up doubtful passages 

 and to reconcile discrepancies of vaidik texts, are merely concerned in 

 thorn of the three former Vedas, not in those of the Atharvaveda. 



Each of these four Vedas consists of two distinct parts : a Sankitd 

 or collection of Mantra*, and a iwrtion called liriUimau'a. 



Mantra (from man, ' to think,' literally ' that by which thinking is 

 effected) means a hymn or prayer. According to the definition given 

 by Madhava-SAyan a, the celebrated commentator of the Vedas, in his 

 work on the MlmAiua, the Jaltuintya-nvaya-mala-vistara, and in his 

 introductions to the Kigreda and Aitnreya brahman'a, a Mantra, is 

 sometimes addressed to the divinity with a verb in the first person ; 

 sometimes it ends with the verb ' thou art,' or with the word ' thee ; ' 

 now it mentions the performance of ritual act*, then it contains praises, 

 invocations, injunctions, reflections, complaints, puts questions or re- 

 turns answers, ftc. (Colebrooke, Misc. Ess.' i. p. 808 ; Miiller, Ancient 

 Hanaknt Literature,' p. 343 ; Ooldrtucker, ' Introduction to the MAnava 

 Kalpa Sotra, or Pan'ini,' p. 69.) The author of a Mantra, as we should 

 V oras the Hinilu authorities state, the saint " by whom it was first 

 spoken," the "s-r" ><r " rememberer" of its text in short the person- 

 age to whom the Mantra u supposed to have been revealed, is called its 

 KMi. The deity to whom " the KiM seeking for the accomplishment 

 of his objects, addresses his praise," is its ttcrata (YAska's < Nirukta,' 

 % 11. 1 1. But since there are Mantra, which contain neither petition 

 uor adoration, the subject of such Mantrai is considered as the deity 

 that u spokrn of ; for example, the praise of generosity is the DtvatA 

 my entire hymns addressed to princes from whom gifts were 

 received by the authors. (Colebr., Misc. Ess.' i. p. 22.) 

 A liralman'a (neuter, not to be confounded with the masculine 



word or the name of the sacerdotal caste), - from brahman, prayer, is 

 twofold ; according to Madhava, it contains " either commandments or 

 explanations; " hi other words, it gives directions for the performance of 

 explains the origin and object of the rite, by giving 

 *, illtMtratioiu and legendary narratives, also by 

 mystical and philosophical kind. The Brahman'* 



citation* . f hymn*, 

 speculations of a mystical 



which became fully developed and systematized in the ritual works 

 called the Kalpa-SAtrat ,- and it is also the source whence sprang those 

 mystical and theosophical writings, the A'nm'yattu and 

 which at a later period expanded into the orthodox \'l<inta philosophy, 

 and which are frequently referred to even by the other philosophical 

 schools, though their orthodoxy is extremely doubtful and widely 

 different from that of the VedanU doctrine. 



That there was originally but one text of each of the four Vedas is 

 plausible enough. Tradition records that the son of ParAs'ara K'i-hi. 

 Kr'islm'a DwaipAyana, surnamed Vyaaa, " having compiled and arranged 

 the scriptures, theogonies and mythological poems, taught the several 

 Vedas to as many disciples, namely, the U'lgveda to Paila, th 

 Yajurveda to Vais'ainpoyana, the San . .limini, and tlm 



Atharvaveda to Sumantu." (Colebr., 'Misc. Ess.' i. p. 14.; ^ 

 R'igveda, I. p. xx.) But inasmuch as these saints taught the lessons 

 they had learned to their pupils, who in their turn commun 

 their knowledge to their disciples, and so forth, it is obvious that great 

 variations must have crept into^the text ; and we know as a fact, that 

 gradually many schools or Charon at arose, each giving preference to its 

 own readings, and, as particularly in the case of the Yajurveda, to its 

 own arrangement and distribution of the sacred text. Hence it came 

 to pass, that each of these Vedas branched off into various Sakhdi 

 (branches), or as we might say, into various editions, which though in 

 the main concurring in their contents, nevertheless contained verbal 

 differences enough to account for the divisions of their respective 

 schools. A work which treats of these schools, the Charan'aryitlia, 

 enumerates several of them by name, and states that five, >i \i;. 

 a thousand, and nine were the respective numbers of the Charan'as of 

 the Rig-, Yajnr-, Sima-, and A thana-reda. Very few only of these 

 editions have come down to us, and the loss of the greatest part 

 of them is the more to be deplored, as they would probably have 

 enabled us to account for some (and important) differences in the 

 verses common to some or all of these Vedas, anil perhaps also for 

 superstitions of later times, which are said to be founded on, but are 

 not countenanced by, the text, as wo possess it now, of the R'igvcda- 

 Sanhita. 



If in order to gain an insight into the peculiar character of each of 

 these Vedas, we consult the view entertained of it by the n;n !, 

 writings, little aid will be afforded us by the mythological narrative of 

 the S'atapatha-brnhman'a (xi. 5, 8, 1), and Mann's ' Law Book,' (i. -''\ 

 which tell us, in the same words, that (Brahma), " for the duo 

 performance of the sacrifice, drew out the threefold eternal Veda, the 

 R'igveda from fire, the Yajurveda from air, and the SAmaveda from tin* 

 sun ; " nor will our knowledge be more advanced by a passage from the 

 Bhogavata (iii. 12-37) and the Vishnu-Puran'a, which inform us (i. cap. 5) 

 that " Brahma created the R'igveda .... from his eastern mouth, the 

 Yajurverla .... from his southern, the Samavoda .... from his 

 western, and the Atharvaveda .... from his northern mouth." But of 

 greater importance is evidently a statement of the Kanshitaki- 

 brahman'a which, while omitting to mention the Atharvaveda, calls 

 the Yajur- and SAma-veda " the attendants of the R'igveda " (M tiller, 

 ' Anc. Sansk. Lit', p. 457). The real bearing of the latter words, how- 

 ever, becomes clear from what Sayan'a says in his introduction to the 

 R'igveda. After having inferred from the ninth verse of the Purusha- 

 sukta, mentioned before (comp. Muir's ' Original Sanskrit Texts,' i. p. 6), 

 the precedence in rank of the R'igveda before the other Vedas, he 

 continues : " the Taittirlyos, or followers of the Black Yajurveda, record 

 that whatever sacrificial act is performed by means of the Sama- anil 

 Yajur-veda is (comparatively) slender, whatever is done by means of 

 the R'igveda is strong ; " and ..." among the hymns found in the 

 Yajurveda there are many R'igveda hymns, which are to be employed 

 by the Adhwary u priest ; all the hymns of the Samaveda come from 

 the R'igveda, and even those who make use of the Atharvaveda read in 

 their own KanhitA to a considerable extent, the very hymns of the 

 R'igveda" (Sayan'a, in Miiller's ed. of the 'Rigveda,' i. p. 2). It 

 results from this statement, not only that the R'igveda w;.x held to be 

 prior in rank to the other Vedas, but that it was considered to be oH.r 

 than they, anil that the hymns of the Samaveda were entirely, and those 

 of the two other Vedas to a considerable degree, extracted from the 

 R'igveda-SanhitA. And tlu's information of the celebrated commen- 

 tator is fully borne out by a comparison of the hymns of the four 

 Vedas. For, though Professor Bcnfey has shown, in his edition ..f the 

 SAmaveda (p. xix), that seventy-one verses of the latter are not met 

 with in the present text of t.he R'igveda, and that many readings of 

 this Veda differ from those of the Samaveda, it does not follow " that 

 the recension of the K'igveda-SaahitA took place at a later period than 

 that of the Samaveda," nor " that the R'igveda verses occurring in tho 

 Samaveda are older than those of the present R'igveda text" (IV. 

 fessor Weber, in his ' Akadcmische Vorlesungcn,' p. 9. 62) ; but, as 

 Professor Muller justly observes (' Anc. Sausk. Lit/ p. 475), that this 

 difference " may possibly be accounted for by tho fact, that we do not 

 possess all the S'AkhAs of the R'igveda." 



The true nature, however, of this relation between tho R'igveda ami 

 tho other Vedas, appears from the put poxes which they were mode to 

 serve, purposes, which, according to the concurrent statement of all 

 native authors, are of a ritual or sacrificial character. 



A vaidik sacrifice is a piece of machinery of a very complicated kind. 



