1847.] On the History and Literature of the Veda. 821 



preserved, — it would be easily explicable if both those Sanhitas con- 

 tained variations of the text, which as regards the passages concerned 

 are older than the text of the Rik. We may even go further and 

 grant that as the compilation of the Rik already in a certain sense 

 rests upon a scientific want, so science also after the manner of ancient 

 and modern times wished to do too much, that men had allowed them- 

 selves improvements and sought to restore uniformity, and that thus 

 we had before us in the Rik a conscious retouching. Certain traces 

 testify at least to external fusions ; and although I cannot believe that 

 the compiler of the Rik would have allowed himself to make essential 

 and extensive alterations, yet I could not venture to pronounce against 

 the assumption of a retouching, before we have before us the bulk of the 

 textual variations of the Sama, at least, which are far more important 

 than those of the Vajasaneye (Yajush). The above mentioned edition 

 of that Veda will give the amplest information on this point. 



As regards the Atharva, the question above proposed appears to be 

 more easily decided. This collection contains, not single unconnected 

 verses, but complete hymns, and has a real arrangement, (i. e. one 

 depending on things, not merely formal.) In this respect it is like the 

 Rik, and can really be called a complement of the first Veda, a com- 

 plement meant to embrace the hymnologic productions of its time, 

 when the mantra was already no longer an expression of immediate 

 religious feeling, but had become a formula of incantation. This Veda 

 therefore contains especially sentences intended to guard against de- 

 structive operations of the divine powers, against sickness and noxious 

 animals, imprecations on enemies, invocations of healing herbs, and for 

 all manner of occurrences in ordinary life, for protection in travelling, 

 luck in play, and such like things. In the pieces which are common 

 to it (the Atharva) with the Rik, it allows itself a great number of 

 transpositions and alterations, which besides in most cases appear to be 

 arbitrary. The language in those sections which are peculiar to it, 

 approaches the flowing expression of later times, but has withal the 

 grammatical forms of the older songs. Between it and the Rik there 

 exists, further the peculiar relation, that the latter also towards the 

 conclusion (in the last Animika of the tenth Mandala) contains a con- 

 siderable number of sections which bear completely the character of 

 the Atharva-hyums, and arc also actually found repeated in this Veda. 



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