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Vedic period itself, as I think altogether likely, the early manuscripts were certain to perish in the furious Indian climate. They must, in that case, have been saved by diligent copying and recopying. The majority of the manuscripts upon which are based our editions of Vedic texts date from recent centuries. Manuscripts that date back to the fourteenth century of our era are rare; only a very few go back to the twelfth.

Here, however, enters one of the curiosities of Hindu religious life. The adherents of a certain Veda or Vedic school, no matter whether the text of that school was reduced to writing or not, must, in theory, know their texts by heart. These are the so-called Çrotriyas or "Oral Traditionalists." They live to this day, being, as it were, living manuscripts of their respective Vedas. The eminent Hindu scholar, the late Shankar Pandurang Pandit, tells us in the preface to his great Bombay edition of the Atharva-Veda how he used three of these oral reciters of the Atharva-Veda out of a total of only four that were at that time still alive in the Dekkhan; and how their oral authority proved to be quite as weighty as the written authority of his manuscripts. These living manuscripts were respectively, Messrs. Bāpujī Jīvanrām; Keçava Bhat bin Dājī Bhat; and Venkan Bhatjī, the last "the most celebrated Atharva