INDIA 



205 



Photo by Messrs. Bourne & Shepherd] 



A HINDU SACRIFICE. 



{Bombay. 



and eighth, as Rama and Krishna, under many names and in various forms, he supplanted the 

 bright Vedic gods. On the other hand, Siva, the third person of the Triad, first as Destroyer, 

 and then as Reproducer, conveyed the profound conception of death as a change of state and 

 the means whereby the gates of heaven are opened to the righteous. Thus Siva claimed 

 reverence from the mystic and philosophical Brahmans, while at the same time, his terrible 

 aspects associated him alike with the Rudra, or " God of Roaring Tempests " of the Veda, and 

 also with the blood-loving deities of the aborigines. Vishnu and Siva, in their diverse male 

 and female shapes, now form, to a large extent, the gods of the Hindu population. 



In those early days religion and literature were intimately connected; a few words on the 

 Aryan religious poetry may therefore not be out of place here. The entire religious service was 

 taken from the Veda, or "Inspired Knowledge," an old Aryan word that reappears in the Latin 

 vid-ere, to see or perceive (compare the Greek o!8a, I know, German wissen, and English wit). 

 The Vedic books are four in number, and known as the Rig- Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama- 

 Veda, and the Atharva-Veda. Of these, the Sama consists mostly of selections from the 

 Rig- Veda, while the Yajur-Veda is only a collection of hymns relating to the practical details 

 of sacrificial rites; hence the Atharva and the Rig Vedas are the chief source from which 

 we can gather information of the religion of the early Aryans. The Atharva-Veda, which is 

 much more recent than the others, consists mainly of incantations, invocations, magic spells, 

 love-charms, and formulas. To the Vedas were appended long prose compositions called the 

 Brahmanas; these, although long and tedious, are yet of considerable interest, because they 

 contain the record of the oldest forms of the sacrificial ritual, the oldest traditions, and 

 the oldest philosophical speculation. The Rig- Veda has two Brahmauas, the Sama- Veda 

 has four, the Yajur-Veda has two, and the Atharva-Veda has only one. These Brahmanas 

 are again divided into the Aranyakas, dealing with the life of the ascetic in the forest; 



