Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/43

language of the Veda. It is based upon a very old popular dialect, into which the poets, to serve their own needs, have introduced many new words and speech-forms. So, for instance, the great liking of the hieratic language for verbs derived from nouns, the so-called denominative or denominal verbs, surrounds the style of the Rig-Veda with an air of turgidity and stiltedness which is far from being archaic. A hieratic poet prefers to say "give battle" (pṛtanāyati, pṛtanyati), rather than "fight"; "cultivate the gods" (devayati), rather than "be pious"; "show a kind disposition" (sumanasyate), rather than "be friendly," etc.

A little over 1000 hymns, containing about 10,000 stanzas, equal in bulk to Homer's poems, are divided into ten mandalas, "circles," or, as we should say, books. Inside of these books the hymns are arranged according to a regular scheme: first, in the order of the number of hymns addressed to a particular god, beginning with the largest number and continuing in a descending scale. Next, each god's hymns are arranged according to the length of each single hymn, again in a descending scale. Six of these ten books (ii-vii), the so-called "family-books," form the nucleus of the collection. Each of these is supposed to have been composed by a different Rishi, poet or seer, or rather by some family of poets who would