Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/78

 The Religion of the Veda humanity. This stately gathering of more than a thousand hymns was viewed as a historical collection. Just as the hymns were composed by poets, so the collection and redaction of the Rig-Veda was sup- posed to have been undertaken by persons of literary taste and redactorial diligence, apparently in order to save these precious monuments for the aesthetic delight of posterity. One cannot now help wondering to what station in life might have belonged these early poets. I can only think of rhapsodists from out of the people, seized on occasion by the divine frenzy, perchance some village barber-old and semi-religious function- ary in the Hindu village-or some village Hans Sachs, 62 'shoe- maker and a poet too "" as we may translate the German doggerel.' Unless, still less likely, Vedic poetry was the child of the muse of some Raja's poct laureate, "given to infinite tobacco," eager, as he took the air under one of those huge banyan-trees large enough to hold a village, to bag some good sub- ject for the delectation of the court of his patron. Delightful as might be some such romantic a view to the student of a literature that requires the devotion 1 "Hans Sachs war ein Schuh- Macher und Poet dazu."