Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/97

Rh and assign to each its time and author, with no other help than the heading to each Psalm, added by a later hand. Knowing, as we do, that they range almost from Moses till after the captivity—at least seven hundred years—the later parts of the task alone would demand all the resources of scholarship. It is true that the Vedic hymns are ten times more numerous than the Psalms, but they are at the same time ten times more monotonous, and full of wearisome repetitions, under which even Professor Wilson's patience gives way. In our Sacred Books the Code precedes, and the history precedes, accompanies, and follows the Psalms. With the Hindoo the Code comes after the hymns, and has to do with a different stage of society, and the history never comes at all! Nevertheless, the Vedas, with all their difficulties, throw a flood of light upon the origin and early state of the Hindoos.

The people among whom the Vedas were composed, as here introduced to us, had evidently passed the nomadic stage. Their wealth consisted of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and buffaloes. Coined money, and indeed money in any shape, was unknown. We meet but two allusions to gold, except for the purpose of ornaments. The cow was to the Vedic Hindoo at once food and money. It supplied him with milk, butter, ghee, curds, and cheese. Oxen ploughed his fields, and carried his goods and chattels. He preserved the Soma-juice in a bag of cow-skin, (Rig-Veda, vol. I, p. 72,) and the cow-hide girt his chariot. (Vol. III, p. 475.) No idea of sacredness was connected with the cow; and it is quite clear, however abhorrent and revolting the truth may appear to their descendants, that in the golden age of their ancestors the Hindoos were a cowkilling and beef-eating people, and that cattle are declared in the Vedas to be the very best of food! Yet modern Hindooism holds it to be a deadly sin to kill a cow, or eat beef, or to use intoxicating drink, and they dare to assert that this was always their creed. We quote texts which leave no room for a doubt on this, to them, important fact:

“Agni, descendant of Bharata thou art entirely ours when sacrificed to with pregnant kine, barren cows, or bulls.”