Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/43

 The Veda 27 language of the Veda. It is based upon a very old popular dialect, into which the poets, to serve their own needs, have introduced many new words and speech-forms. So, for instance, the great liking of the hieratic language for verbs derived from nouns, the so-called denominative or denominal verbs, surrounds the style of the Rig-Veda with an air of turgidity and stiltedness which is far from being archaic. A hieratic poet prefers to say "give battle "(prtanayati, prtanyati), rather than "fight"; "cultivate the gods" (devayati), rather than "be pious"; "show a kind disposition" (sumanasyate), rather than "be friendly," etc. A little over 1000 hymns, containing about 10,000 stanzas, equal in bulk to Homer's poems, are divided into ten mandalas, " circles," or, as we should say, books. Inside of these books the hymns are arranged according to a regular scheme: first, in the order of the number of hymns addressed to a particular god, beginning with the largest number and continuing in a descending scale. Next, each god's hymns are arranged according to the length of each single hymn, again in a descending scale. Six of these ten books (ii-vii), the so-called "family-books," form the nucleus of the collection. Each of these is supposed to have been composed by a different Rishi, poet or seer, or rather by some family of poets who would