Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/60

 The Religion of the Veda arate works whose object, again, is to expound the combination of prayer and ritual at the sacrifice. The meaning of the word brahmaṇa is not altogether clear. Either it means "holy practice," or " religious performance in distinction from mantra, "holy utterance," or " religious text. Or, perhaps rather it means the theological explanation by Brahman priests of the religious ritual as a whole, including both prayer and performance. As regards both contents and literary quality, the Brahmanas are closely analogous to the Hebrew Talmud. In the main they are bulky prose statements of the details of the great Vedic sacrifices, and their theological meaning. Both the performances and their explana- tion are treated in such a way, and spun out to such length, as to render these works on the whole monu- ments of tediousness and intrinsic stupidity. And yet the Brāhmanas compel the student of Hinduism that comes to scoff to stay to pray. In the first place they are important because they are written in connected prose-the earliest narrative prose in the entire field of Indo-European speech, only little less archaic than the prose formulas of the Yajur-Veda.' They are especially important for syntax: in this respect they represent the old Hindu speech far better than the Rig-Veda, whose syntax and style 1 See above, p. 33. 44 "> I