Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/41

Vedic literature, in its first intention, is throughout religious, or it deals with institutions that have come under the control of religion. It includes hymns, prayers, and sacred formulas, offered by priests to the gods in behalf of rich lay sacrificers; charms for witchcraft, medicine, and other homely practices, manipulated by magicians and medicine-men, in the main for the plainer people. From a later time come expositions of the sacrifice, illustrated by legends, in the manner of the Jewish Talmud. Then speculations of the higher sort, philosophic, cosmic, psycho-physical, and theosophic, gradually growing up in connection with and out of the simpler beliefs. Finally there is a considerable body of set rules for conduct in every-day secular life, at home and abroad, that is, a distinct literature of customs and laws. This is the Veda as a whole.

The Veda consists, as we have seen, of considerably more than a hundred books, written in a variety of slightly differentiated dialects and styles. Some of the Vedic books are not yet published, or even unearthed. At the base of this entire canon, if we may so call it, lie four varieties of metrical composition, or in some cases, prayers in sacred, solemn prose. These are known as the Four Vedas in the narrower sense the Rig-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sāma-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda. These four names