Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/41

(
The Veda
25
Vedic literature, in its first intention, is through-
out 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, illus-
trated 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 consider-
ably 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 composi-
tion, 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 Sama-
Veda, and the Atharva-Veda. These four names