Ri

s on both sides of the Indus now known as Eastern Kabulistan and the Panjāb. That ancient poetry has come down to us in the form of a collection of hymns called the Rigveda. The cause which gathered the poems it contains into a single book was not practical, as in the case of the Sāma- and Yajur-veda, but scientific and historical. For its ancient editors were undoubtedly impelled by the motive of guarding this heritage of olden time from change and destruction. The number of hymns c

ilies to which they owed their being. Moreover, the hymns contained in these "family books," as they are usually called, are arranged on a uniform plan differing from that of the rest. The first, eighth, and tenth books are not the productions of a single family of seers respectively, but consist of a number of groups based on id

er of hymns. This fact, combined with the uniformity of these books in general character and internal arrangement, renders it probable that they formed the nucleus of the Rigveda, to which the remaining books were successively added. It further seems

rough the whole book. The latter, however, does not form a parallel to the family books. For though a single family, that of the Ka?vas, at least predominates among its authors, the prevalence in it of the strophic

ook reappears. There are, moreover, numerous parallel and directly identical passages in the two collections. It is, however, at present impossible to decide which of the two is the earlier, or why it is that, though so nearly related, they should

amilies. The Pavamāna hymns have affinities to the first and eighth books also. When the hymns of the different families were combined into books, and clearly not till then, all their Pavamāna hymns were taken out and gathered into a single collection. This of course does not imply that the Pavamāna hymns themselves were of recent origin. On the contrary, though some of them may date from the time when the tenth book came into existence, th

with the opening words (agnim īl?e) of the first stanza of the Rigveda, is probably an indication that Books I.–IX. already existed in his day even as a combined collection. That the tenth book is indeed an aggregate of supplementary hymns is shown by its position after the Soma book, and by the number o

e only deities of widely established popularity, such as Indra and Agni, maintain their position. The comprehensive group of the Vi?ve devās, or "All gods," has alone increased in prominence. On the other hand, an altogether new type, the deification of purely abstract ideas, such as "Wrath" and "Faith,"

s compared with r, is, in agreement with later Sanskrit, strikingly on the increase. In inflexion the employment of the Vedic nominative plural in āsas is on the decline. With regard to the vocabulary, many old words are going out of use, while others are becoming commoner. Thus the particle sīm, occurri

of later origin than others, and some advance has been made towards assigning them to three or even five literary epochs. Research has, however, not yet arrived at any certain results

kill, was developed. The poets of the older part of the Rigveda themselves mention predecessors, in whose wise they sing, whose songs they desire to renew, and speak of ancestral hymns produced in days of yore. As far as linguistic evidence is concerned, it affords little help in discriminating periods within the Rigveda except with regard to the tenth book. For throughout the hymns, in spite of the number of authors, ess

Vedas, which are largely composed of hymns, stanzas, and lines borrowed from the Rigveda. The other Vedas are, in fact, for the criticism of the Rigveda, what manuscripts are for other lite

t the time when the text of the Sāma-veda, the oldest form of the Yajur-veda, and the Atharva-veda was constituted. The number of cases is infinitesimal in which the Rigveda shows a corruption from which the others are free. Thus

exts formed mainly by borrowing from it hymns which were arbitrarily cut up into groups of verses or into single verses, solely in order to meet new liturgical needs. For those who removed verses of the Rigveda from their context and mixed them up with their own new cre

h modifications as it had undergone reached their conclusion in the Sam?hitā text. This text differs in hundreds of places from that of the composers of the hymns; but its actual words are nearly always the same as those used by the ancient seers. Thus there would be no uncertainty as to whether the right word, for instance, was sumnam or dyumnam. The difference lies almost entirely in the phonetic changes which the words have undergone according to the rules of Sandhi prevailing in the classical language. Thus what was formerly pronounced as tuam? hi agne now appears as tvam? hy agne. The modernisation of the text thereby produced is, however, only partial, and is often inconsistently applied. The euphonic combinations introduced in the Sam?hitā text h

ssibility of varying some of these formulas, rejects the notion of changing the text of a certain Rigvedic verse, proposed by some teachers, as something not to be thought of. The Brāhma?as further often mention the fact that such and such a hymn or liturgical group contains a particular number of verses. All such numeric

om the necessity of adapting them to new ritual technicalities. On the other hand, they contain many statements which confirm our present text. Thus all that the Sūtra o

ic questions connected with the Vedic text. The conclusion may therefore be drawn that the Sam?hitā text did not come into existence till after the completion of the Brāhma?as. With regard to the āra?yakas and Upanishads, which form supplements to the Brāhma?as, the case is different. These works not only mention technical grammatical terms for certain groups of letters, but contain detailed doctrines about the phonetic treatment of the Vedic text.

" text, which being an analysis of the Sam?hitā, gives each separate word in its independent form, and thus to a considerable extent restores the Sam?hitā text to an older stage. That the Pada text was not quite contemporaneous in origin with the other is shown by its containing some undoubted misinterpretations and misunderst

but only given there over again in the Sam?hitā form. This shows that ?ākalya did not acknowledge them as truly Rigvedic, a view justified by internal evidence. This group of six, which is do

aka. Here every word of the Pada text occurs twice, being connected both with that which precedes and that which follows. Thus the first four words, if represented by a, b, c, d, would be read as ab, bc, cd. The Ja?ā-pā?ha, or "woven-text," in its tur

having been composed for the purpose of exhibiting exactly all

e Rigveda intact by registering its contents from various points of view, besides furnishing calc

ingle recension only; but is there any evidence th

nd the ?ānkhāyanas admitted the same group, diminished only by a few verses. Hence the tradition of the Purā?as, or later legendary works, mentions only the three schools of ?ākalas, Vāshkalas, and Mā??ūkas. If the latter ever possessed a recension of an independent character, all traces of it were lost at an early period in ancient India, for no information of any kind about it has been preserved. Thus only the two schools of the ?ākalas and the Vāshkalas come into consideration. The subsi

remained the character of the Sanskrit accent till later than the time of Pā?ini. But just as the old Greek musical accent, after the beginning of our era, was transformed into a stress accent, so by the seventh century A.D. (and probably long before) the Sanskrit accent had undergone a similar change. While, however, in modern Greek the stress accent has remained, owing to the high pitch of the old acute, on the same syllable as bore the musical accent in the ancient language, the modern pronunciation of Sanskrit h

n the same syllable as bore it in the proto-Aryan language. In Greek it is generally on the same syllable as in Sanskrit, except when interfered with by the specifically Greek law restricting the accent to one of the last three syllables. Thus

anudātta is indicated by a horizontal stroke below the syllable bearing it, and the svarita by a vertical stroke above. Thus yājnasyà ("of sacrifice") would mean that the s

hese stanzas (often loosely called verses) are composed in some fifteen different metres, only seven of which, however, are at all

etrical unit is also called pāda, or "foot," but for a very different reason; for the word has here really the figurative sense of "quarter" (from the foot of a quadruped), Because the most usual kind of stanza has four lines. The ordi

sition midway between the system of the Indo-Iranian period and that of classical Sanskrit. For the evidence of the Avesta, with its eight and eleven syllable lines, which ignore quantity, but are combined into stanzas otherwise the same as those of the Rigveda, indicates that the metrical practice of the period when Persians and Indians were still one people, depended on no other principle than the counting of syllables. In the Sanskrit

es, though not exactly determined, having a tendency to be iambic also. Thi

-fourth (2450) of the total number of stanzas in the Rigveda is composed. A

īle pu

devám ?

ratnadh

thus in lines imitating t

gni, domes

ster of s

st prodiga

generally called ?loka) to have become the predominant measure of Sanskrit poetry. A development in the character of this metre may be observed within the Rigveda itself. All its verses in the oldest hymns are the same, being iambic in rhythm. In later hymns, however, a tendency to differentiate the first and third from the second and fourth lines, by making the former non-iambic, begins to s

es of eleven syllables, which are practically catalectic jagatīs, as they end [long][short][long][shortlong]. These two verses being so closely allied and havi

egular and typical deviation from this rule is to conclude a hymn with a single stanza in a met

e group consists either of three stanzas in the same simple metre, generally gāyatrī, or of the combination of two stanzas in dif

x. 20, 1; 121

th a vertical stroke above; (2) that of the ?atapatha Brāhma?a, which marks the acute with a horizontal stroke below; and (3) that of the Sāma