814 On the Historij and Literature of the Veda. [Aug. 



which will at the same time yield the richest spoils, — the literature 

 of the Veda. You will allow me, in order to make room in some mea- 

 sure for this extensive subject, to regard as known all which has hither- 

 to been written or published on the Veda. Of this there is so little, 

 and that little has been so much the subject of remark, that it is suffi- 

 ciently known in all Oriental circles. 



It has been the peculiar fate of the Veda that being at first veiled or 

 magnified into the extravagant by Brahmanical mystification and osten- 

 tation, — the eifects of which have not yet disappeared, — it presented 

 a terrifying complication of writings, with which no one trusted himself 

 to meddle. When H. T. Colebrooke had at length brought light into 

 the darkness, still the importance of these books in part escaped him ; 

 and Frederick Rosen, who formed a right estimate of it, and was the 

 man to render the discovery fruitful, was only permitted to rear him- 

 self a beautiful monument, to make a commencement, which makes us 

 the more severely miss the continuation, in proportion to the certainty 

 that the latter would, through the writer's growing experience, have 

 gained a perfect form. No other was willing to tread in his footsteps ; 

 and so Rosen's book, and Colebrooke' s, in its way, excellent treatise, 

 are still the only mines for our knowledge of the Veda. I can scarcely 

 mention what has been done by the Missionary Stevenson for the Sama 

 Veda: for his edition of the text is less correct than any tolerable MS., 

 and his translation is utterly useless. 



Let me be permitted here to supply to Colebrooke' s treatise those 

 complements, which I have had the opportunity of drawing from an 

 inspection of the MS. sources in Paris, London, and Oxford, — com- 

 plements which will refer to the relation of the first Veda to the re- 

 maining collections of hymns, and to its Indian compilation, and which, 

 — so far as our researches must be based upon indigenous preparator 

 ry labours also, — could be communicated in no more fitting quarter 

 than in a learned circle which has set itself for its task the investiga- 

 tion of the East. For according to my conviction no more essential 

 service could be rendered to the history of the ancient east, perhaps to 

 the whole of ancient history, than to make known and exactly investi- 

 gate the Vedic writings. 



The well-known definition of the difference between Mantra and 

 Brahmana, — which is found in all possible writings explanatory of the 



