266 DR J. MUIR's account OF THE 



The different gods are respectively members of the one Soul." This mode of 

 conceiving the gods must however be regarded as a subsequent refinement, 

 belonging to an age of reflection ; as though some of the later hymns certainly 

 contain passages which express monotheistic, or perhaps rather pantheistic ideas, 

 the independent individuality of the different gods appears to be the doctrine of 

 the older hymns. Some of the hymns (supposed by Professor Muller to be among 

 the latest) sing the praises of certain liberal princes, who had bestowed ample 

 largesses upon their authors. One contains the lamentations of a gambler who 

 had lost his all by infatuated addiction to play ; a second seems to consist of 

 a satire on the performances of priests, which it compares to the croaking of 

 frogs at the commencement of the rainy season ; others contain some references 

 to conflicts between different chieftains and tribes, and to the contests of different 

 families ofpriests for pre-eminence. (See Roth on the Lit. and Hist, of the 

 Veda, Diss. 3d.) It is difficult to say whether this collection of hymns has pre- 

 served to us all the poetical productions of that early period. On the one hand, it 

 might have been supposed that when so many persons possessed so great a facility 

 in poetical composition, they would have exercised their powers on a greater variety 

 of subjects ; and we may suspect that, as the hymns were collected by the sacer- 

 dotal descendants of the authors, the collectors may have been less anxious to 

 preserve those which were not of a religious character. On the other hand, it 

 may be urged, that the peculiarly strong influence which religion exerts over the 

 imaginations of men in an early stage of culture, and the comparative triviality 

 of terrestrial affairs, or perhaps the higher profit resulting from the employment of 

 their talents on subjects connected with the worship of the gods, may have led 

 the ancient bards to direct their efforts into this channel by preference. On the 

 whole, it seems most probable that many of the old hymns have been lost. 



No particular sanctity appears to have been at first ascribed to the hymns. 

 Their authors, indeed, speak of them, especially of those which were new, as 

 being acceptable to the gods ; but they generally describe them as the produc- 

 tions of their own minds, — as being made, fashioned, generated, by themselves ; 

 and though references are occasionally found to the aid or suggestion of the 

 different gods, and though in other places a mysterious power is ascribed to the 

 hymns, it does not seem to have been the prevailing idea of the poets that their 

 compositions were the results of any divine inspiration. The descendants of the 

 bards, however, who preserved and collected the hymns, soon began to attribute 

 a peculiar sacredness to the productions of their ancestors, and to regard them as 

 the most efficacious forms in which the favour of the gods could be supplicated. 

 This had long been the received opinion when the Brahmanas were compiled, as 

 in these works the Vedas are said to have sprung, though only mediately, from 

 the Creator. Even in the Upanishads (which are the concluding portions of the 

 Brahmanas), however, it does not appear that the same broad line of demarcation 



