The most interesting feature of this and similar passages is the tendency of their authors to maintain the greater efficiency of one of the later Vedas in comparison to that of the R'igveda, and consequently the greater practical superiority of these Vedas over the avowedly oldest Veda. And this is intelligible enough if we compare the contant˘ of these Vedas.
The worship alluded to in many hymns of the R'igveda must have consisted more of isolated sacrificial offerings than of a series of acts strung together so as to form an elaborate sacrifice. There are other hymns, it is true, which betray the existence, at their time, of a ritual, already become complicated, as when three or four, or even seven., priests are mentioned by the poet; but though these hymns, as well as the former, bear testimony to the existence, at that early period, of ritual acts, it does not follov that the R'igveda, as such, was composed for the purpose of being recited when they were per formed. From the nature of its hymns, it results, on the contrary, that, having been composed, they were at some subsequent period connected with those pious acts which became more and more complicated, and gradually were systematized. But then even there remain verses which would not easily bend to such artificial purposes; and whole hymns, too, which would resist an attempt to force them into a liturgic code for which they were not intended by the poet's mind. A collection of songs, in short, which was the natural growth of time, and, to some extent, at least, the ingenuous outburst of the poets' feelings, became inadequate for a regular liturgy of a highly-developed and throughout artificial ritual. Out of this necessity there arose the Mina- and the Yajur veda. The former was entirely made up of extracts from the R'igveda, put together so as to suit the ritual of the so-called Soma sacrifices. For, as all native authorities agree in stating that the Samaveda contains none but R'igveda verses, the absence of 71 verses in the recension of this Veda, edited by prof. Benfey, from the recension in which the m now exists, does not disprove their unanimous statement: it must be accounted for by the circumstance that these verses belonged to one or the other of the recensions of the R'igveda, which, as mentioned before, are no longer preserved. The origin of the Yajurveda is similar to that of the. Silmaveda; it, too, is chiefly composed of verses taken from the R'igveda ; but as the sphere of the ritual for which the compilation of this Veda became necessary is wider than that of the Silinaveda, and as the poetry of the R'igveda no longer sufficed for certain sacrifices with which this ritual had been enlarged, new mantras were added to it—the so-called Yajus, in prose, which thus became a distinc tive feature of this Veda; and it is on the Yajurveda, therefore, that the orthodox Hindu looked with especial predilection, for it could better satisfy his sacrificial wants than the SOma , and still more, of course, than the R'igveda. " The Yajurveda," says :Sayan:a, in
Iris introduction to the Taittiriya "is like a wail,'the two other Vedas like paint ings (on it)." The sacredness of the SOma- and Yajurveda, and the belief in their inspired character, rest on the assumption that they are of the same origin as the R'ig veda,which dates from eternity, and which was " seen" by the R'ishis who uttered it. That, in the case of the Yajurveda, this theory is only partially correct, results already from the description just given of it; for whatever losses the present text of the R'igveda may have suffered, it is admitted by all authorities that its mantras were always metrical, and that it can never, therefore, have possessed passages in prose. But how frail this theory is, and in what sense it is possible to speak of the sameness of origin even in the case of those hymns of the Sima- and Yajurveda which are composed of R'igveda verses, a comparison of the place occupied by the verses of a few hymns taken from one and the other of these with the place which the same verses occupy in the R'igveda, will sufficiently show.
The first hymn of the Stimaveda consists of ten verses, nine of which are contained in the present recension of the R'igveda. If by the side of each of these verses the place is marked which it holds in the R'igveda, the result is this: — - — 'See the article "The Inspired Writings of Hinduism," in the Westminster Review for fan., 1864.) All, therefore, that is left of the oldest Veda in the Silmaveda and Yajurveda, is a R'igveda piecemeal; its hymns scattered about; verses of the same hymn transposed; verses from different hymns combined, and even the compositions of different poets brought into one and the samc hymn, as if they belonged to the same authorship. That, under such treatment, the Yajurveda should have lost all poetical worth, is but what may be expected; it must be, however, matter of surprise that the Samareda should have saved so much, as it even now possesses, of that genuine bbauty which distin guishes the R'igveda poetry. The Atharvaveda, too, is made up in a similar manner as the Yajurveda, with this difference only, that the additions in it to the aarbled extracts from. the R'igveda are more considerable than those in the Yajurveda. It is avowedly the latest Veda, and even its name, "Atharvaveda," as it was current already doling the classical period of Sariskrit literature, does not yet occur in the oldest Upanishads (q.v.), where only the songs or revelations of the Atharva-Angiras, or of the Blir'igu Angiras, apparently denoting this Veda, are spoken of. The Atharvaveda was not used, as Madhusfldana, in his treatise on Sanskrit literature says, "for the sacrifice, but merely for appeasing evil influences, for insuring the success of sacrificial acts, for incantations, etc. ;" but on this very ground, and perhaps on account of the mysterious nef:s which pervades its songs, it obtained, among certain schools, a degree of sanctity which even surpassed that of the older Vedas.