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 The Religion of the Veda Vaidika in the Dekkhan." Mr. Pandit cites them by sigla, quite in the manner of inanimate manuscripts, respectively, as Bp, K, and V. They are, I believe, now all dead. 22 We are waiting now for the time when the India Exploration Society shall step out from its existence on paper, and take hold of the shovel and the spade. With bated breath we shall then be watching to see whether great good fortune will make it possible to dig through the thick crust of centuries that are piled upon the Vedic period. If so, it will be some- thing like the revelation of the Mycenean age that was found at the root of Hellenic civilisation. Until that time Vedic life and institutions, reported only by word of mouth, must remain an uncertain quan- tity. The hymns of the Veda are to a considerable degree cloudy, turgid, and mystic; taken by them- selves they will never yield a clear picture of human life that fits any time or place. We have from the entire Vedic period no annals except priestly annals, or such at least as have been edited by priests. It is as though we relied upon cloister chronicles alone for our knowledge of the politics and institutions of a certain time. Or, to use an even homelier compari- son, as though we had to reconstruct the social conditions of a more modern time from an inter- cepted boarding-school correspondence. The poets,