184/.] On the History and Literature of the Veda. 819 



tailed and well arranged. We should moreover deceive ourselves were 

 we to believe that the Veda contains exclusively religious songs ; a 

 number of pieces have found their way into it, which have no reference 

 to the worship of the gods. 



In the tenth Mandala, e. g. in which a dice-player laments deeply 

 his ruinous propensity, which against his best resolutions, seduces him 

 again continually into new sin. Another piece in the seventh Mandala, 

 ascribed to Vasishtha (of which Colebrooke has already given a passing 

 notice) describes in a sportive way the revival of the frogs at the 

 beginning of the rainy season, and compares their quacking with the 

 singing of Brahma at a sacrifice. A very frequent form of hymn 

 (of which examples are wanting in the part of the Rik already made 

 public) is the dialogistic, — conversations of the gods among themselves, 

 or of a god with a Rishi. In the fourth Mandala, e. g. Vamadeva 

 speaks with Indra, and mocks him, " What can Indra forbid me ? no 

 one regards him either of the living, or of those who shall be born." 

 As to these and similar pieces the interpreters are at a loss how to 

 assign the Rishi and the Devata, (i. e. the inspired author and the god 

 invoked ;) but in the song of the gamester (abovementioned) they 

 have preferred making the dice the deity (devata) rather than give up 

 these unbending terms. But the less these remnants of ancient poetry 

 are suited to the established frames of liturgical forms, the more worthy 

 they undoubtedly are of our observation ; and a representation of the 

 most ancient circumstances of the people, and the character of this 

 literature may in many respects be more easily acquired from these 

 hymus, than from those constructed in more regular form. Yet I will 

 not assert that these pieces belong to the oldest of all ; on the contrary, 

 the most of them bear plain traces of a later origin. 



The Sanhita of the Rig Veda thus claims to give the hymns com- 

 plete, just as the Rishi has spoken, — or according to the expression of 

 the interpreter, — has seen them. Not so the collections of the Sama, 

 and the Vajasaneya Yajush. Both give single verses or single strophes, 

 which do not at all necessarily stand in any internal connexion with 

 each other, but only receive such connexion through the ritual which 

 they accompany. In the Sama I believe I have remarked besides, 

 that not only the metre, which in virtue of its connexion with melody 

 began very early to play an important part in sacrificial rites, but even 



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