Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/79

 63 The Hieratic Religion of a lifetime, it is not the correct view. My own fancy in the earlier days moved along these lines. I am not sure but what some such conception of Vedic literature, faulty as I now believe it to be, drew me into these studies more enticingly than could have the soberer view of ripening years. + I shall endeavor later on to attach the right value to the poetry of the Vedic hymns in the abstract. I shall also show the way in which these poems ex- press a high quality of religious feeling on the part of their composers-Rishis, as they are called in the texts themselves. My endeavor shall not be to minimise the quality of these compositions, but rather to show that they contain the rudiments of a far higher species of thought than these early poets could have dreamt of; thought which in its way, and along its particular avenue, has become final for all time in India, and even outside of India. At present we are engaged with the more external charac- ter of the Rig-Veda-its epidermis, as we might say. The Rig-Veda collection served purely utilitarian purposes. It is in fact a prayer-book whose explana- tion ought not to be undertaken without reference to definite occasions and definite practices. The main body of the books of the Rig-Veda, the so-called fam- ily books,¹ represents in all probability the prayers 1 See above, p. 27.