Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/214

Operations on such a scale are calculated to show the magnates of the present day meat-packing trust that they have yet to learn from these arch-flatterers a trick or two in the way of collecting cattle.

If my hearers shall ask now what, after all this, is the essence of Rig-Vedic religion, I am for my part not unready to answer in accordance with hints thrown out before. It is poetry, or rather, more precisely, poetic exaltation, or the pride and joy of poetic creativeness. This is at first conceived to be favored and promoted by the gods, because they get the fruit of it in the form of praise and flattery. The finer the frenzy of the poet and the more finished the product of his art, the better pleased are the gods. Therefore the gods, next, co-operate with the poets, promoting their devotion and its expression. Finally, these twin factors of devoted fervor and its successful utterance in hymns and stanzas create sensations of satisfaction which are easily taken for sanctification. At first the article is not very genuine. But it goes on being the receptacle of better thoughts until it grows into what we may consider real religious feeling.

To some extent we can test this statement by showing what the religious feeling of the Veda is not, rather than what it is. The frank system of barter of the sacrificer's soma and ghee for the god's