10 Colorado College Studies. 



tice of the A tli ar va-Veda. lu the preparation of the 

 above paper various items of interest had to be passed over. 

 They will form the chief part of the present article. 



Born in a country where the excessive heat makes clear those 

 words of the psalmist, "The sun shall not smite thee by day 

 nor the moon by night," subject to many disorders of the digest- 

 ive organs incidental to a hot country, surrounded by dangers 

 from reptiles of which we know next to nothing, suffering from 

 long continued drought, followed by terrific thunder and hail 

 storms, and without revelation, the Hindus were particularly 

 adapted to fall into the bonds of superstition. In its iron grasp 

 they seem to have harbored no thought of inquiring into natural 

 phenomena; and, while developing abstruse and subtle philoso- 

 phical doctrines, keen grammatical insight, and a system of 

 phonetics which is the basis of the science to-day, they remained 

 utterly unscientific in all matters pertaining to the material 

 world, and were perfectly helpless to explain correctly even the 

 most simple process of nature. They looked upon the wonders 

 of creation as children might, and in. each new phenomenon they 

 saw a living sentient being manifesting himself for the good or 

 harm of the beholder. The cloud was a huge serpent keeping 

 back the rain, the lightning was the weapon of Indra smiting 

 ihe serpent and compelling him to allow the rain to fall, and an 

 ■eclipse was an attempt by the demon R a h u to swallow the sun 

 or moon. A g n i or fire was a god born of two sticks. Rubbing 

 the sticks together, they prayed earnestly for his appearance, 

 and the resulting fire was regarded as an answer to prayer. If 

 some doubter muttered spells instead, the spells were the cause 

 of A g n i ' s coming in his eyes and the step to the practice of 

 witchcraft was a short one. 



The use of spells or imprecations was accepted by the 

 orthodox Hindus as proper in certain cases, and the M a, n a v a- 

 D h a r m a c; a s t r a states definitely that the hymns of the 

 A t h a r V a-V e d a are to be used by a Brahman as a weapon 

 against his enemies. The hymns of this Veda were also used 



