184/.] On the History and Literature of the Veda. 829 



These books themselves are the oldest commentaries of the Veda, and 

 bear witness to the existence of a grammatical science, which therefore 

 must have preceded Buddhism also. 



Near and immediately after the Brahmanas, there may, yet further, 

 have existed a proper and independent interpretation of the Veda, but 

 this has been without doubt confined to the more difficult and import- 

 ant passages ; and the Naighantuka may have been a collection of 

 such sections, as used especially to be explained in the schools. Con- 

 tinuous commentaries probably did not then exist ; and that of Ma- 

 dhava and Sayana, composed in the middle of the 14th century of our 

 era is indeed the first and only complete gloss of the Rig Veda. From 

 the long series of centuries which lie between Yaska and Sayana but 

 few remnants of an interpretative literature connected with the first 

 Veda have remained to us, or at least have as yet been discovered. 

 Sankara and the Vedantic school had turned chiefly to the Upanishads. 

 Nevertheless a scholar of Sankara, Anandatirtha, has composed a gloss 

 on one part of the Rig Veda, at least an explanation of which by Jaya- 

 tirtha, embracing the 2nd and 3rd Adhyayas of the 1st Ashtaka is 

 to be found in the library of the East India House in London. The 

 mode of explanation is essentially the same as we have in Sayana, only 

 we can frequently reproach it with a still more violent treatment of 

 the text. Sayana himself, who is not always scrupulous in stating his 

 sources, besides the Niruktatika of Durga, a fundamental book which 

 has been preserved to us, cites also Bhattabkashara Misra, and Bhara- 

 taswami as interpreters of the Veda. Of the former I have seen at 

 least a commentary on a section of the Yajur Veda, on which he appears 

 to have given a complete comment. Sayana' s citations do not by any 

 means necessarily show that he has given any explanation of the Rik. 



Finally, Sayana' s commentary itself, which is already in some measure 

 known by Rosen's extracts will always remain our principal source for 

 the interpretation of the Veda, as well as a mine for the history of the 

 literature generally. It belongs, it is true, to a period in which Vedic 

 studies were but artificially revived, and to the range of whose view 

 that ancient literature lay so far off that we cannot conceive it to have 

 been distinctly understood ; — it is entirely dependent on what is more 

 ancient, and especially makes the most extensive use of the Nirukta 

 and Naighantuka, but still it gives without doubt all which the iiulige- 



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