supposed to know the sacred poetry without the help of a prayer-book (A. S. L., pp 175, 473, and Chips, vol. i. p. 9).
Originally preserved by scattered individuals (for the Mantra part of the Vedas, [or their Sanhitâ] was composed in an age when writing was not in use), the hymns were subsequently collected and arranged in their present form: a task which Indian tradition assigns to Vyâsa, the Arranger, but which was probably the work of many different scholars, possibly during many generations. The same tradition asserts that each Veda was collected, under Vyâsa's superintendence, by a different editor; and that the collections, transmitted from these primary compilers to their disciples, were, in the course of transmission, re-*arranged in various ways, until the number of Sanhitâs of each Veda in circulation was very considerable. Each school had its own version, but the differences are supposed by Wilson to have concerned only the order, not the matter of the Sûktas.
The extreme antiquity of our extant Veda is guaranteed by the amplest testimony. In the indexes compiled by native scholars 500 or 600 years before Christ, "we find every hymn, every verse, every word and syllable of the Veda accurately counted" (Chips, vol. i. p. 11). Before this was done, not only was the whole vast collection complete, but it was ancient; for had it been a recent composition it would not have enjoyed the preëminent sanctity which rendered it the object of this minute attention. And not only is the Veda ancient, but it has been shown that, from the variety of its component strata, it must have been the growth of no small period of time, its earliest elements being of an almost unfathomable antiquity. Max Müller, who has elaborately treated this question, divides the Vaidik age—the age during which the Veda was in process of formation—into four great epochs. The most primitive hymns of the Rig-Veda he attributes to what he terms the Chhandas period (from Chhandas, or metre), the limits of which cannot be fixed in the ascending direction, but which descends no later than 1000 B.C. And he thinks that "we cannnot well assign a date more recent than 1200 to 1500 before our era" (Ibid., vol. i. p. 13.) for the composition of these hymns. The ten books of the Rig-Veda, however, comprise the poetry of two different ages. Some of the hymns betray a more recent origin, and
