The performance of the great crouta sacri fices required the participation of three classes of priests, the Hotar, or the reciting priest, the Udgatar, or the chanter, and the Adhvaryu, to whose lot fell the performance of the manual labor of the ceremonies. To this corresponds the tripartite division of the hieratic literature for the Veda of the Hotar is the Rig, that of the Udgitar is the Sam, and that of the Adhvaryn, the Yajur Veda. In each Veda three main classes of works exist, the Sari). hitas, Brihmanas and Sutras; and within each Veda these types follow one another in this order, for the E:rahrnapas presuppose the Satii bids, and the Sutras the Brahmanas. But it does not follow from this that the composition of all the works of one type belongs to the same period. So that it is misleading to speak of a Brahman or Sidra period and attempt to define them as if there had ever been a period in which, for example, the Brahmanas and nothing else were composed. Besides there existed in each Veda different schools (cora gas), varying more or less from one another. Sometimes the difference consisted only in de tails of the ritual, sometimes in the theological exposition of its meaning, sometimes it ex tended to the Saiiihitas themselves. In the lat ter case the result is various recensions of the same Saithia known as fakluls (°branches°). In the former cases the differences lead to the composition of different Bralunapas and Sutras belonging to the same Veda. • The Sarlihitas (from sam, a preposition comparable in meaning with avv and Vdha, °to put,* which appears also in riftwu ) are collections made from this floating mass of lyric material and sacrificial formulae. To them the term Vela is frequently applied in a nar rower sense, so that, for example, Rig Veda may mean either the Rig Veda Sathhita, or that Sal:1111;a together with all the works of other classes dependent upon it.
The Rig Veda (from re, a laudatory stanza, especially one that is to be recited in opposition to one that is to he sung) is the oldest and most important of these collections. It con tains a little over 1,000 hymns, that consist of about 10,000 stanzas, and so are in bulk a little less than the Iliad and the Odyssey to?ether. The hymns are religious lyrics of evidently very diverse origin and of correspondingly un equal literary merit. The mass of them, how ever, are directed alike to the greater gods of the Vedic pantheon, extolling their deeds, im ploring them to come to the sacrifice, accept the offerings and grant blessings to their worship pers. It is from this material that the Hotar forms the Canon of the hymns that are required at each crauto sacrifice. But as the order of hymns does not follow the order of their em ployment in the ritual, and as the collection contains also material — for example, the fu neral and wedding stanzas — not intended for this purpose, it becomes evident that the pri mary purpose of the collection was not to fur nish a manual for the Hotar. It has, there fore, been assumed that the purpose of the collection was historic and scientific — to pre serve a body of poetry the value of which was appreciated — and some of the hymns have been interpreted as secular poetry. Later investiga
tions, however, go to show that these hymns also are religious, and that the Rig Veda itself is a collection of mantras intended for a ritual different from the system afterward expounded in the Bralunanas and Sutras.
The hymns are distributed into 10 books, but the different principles of arrangement ob servable in them show that the collection is the expansion of a still earlier collection. With re gard to its tradition,— the text of the hymns had evidently suffered a number of corruptions before they were brought together in the pres ent collection. The formation of the latter an tedated not only the composition of the Brahmanas, but also the formation of the other Sarithitas — the time of the redaction of these Satithiths must, however, be carefully distin guished from the time of composition of the material contained in them. From this time on the utmost care was bestowed upon the pres ervation of the text, and these efforts attained upon the whole a wonderful success. An ex ception is to be made for the work of certain scholarly redactors — the close of whose activ ity falls between the composition of the Brah manas and the time of Panini, who modernized the text to a certain extent chiefly by forcing upon it the observance of the later laws of san'idhi,— the rules that govern the contact of words in a sentence. From their hands issued the Satithita text. For its protection was com posed the Pada-patha, or 'word text," which attempted to undo the effects of the laws of sathdhi and give each word in its original form. Still more elaborate precautions of a similar nature were the Krama-pitha, or 'step text," the Jata-patha, or 'woven text,' and the Ghana 'Atha. Further safeguards were certain pho netic treatises, the Praticakhyas, to be mentioned below. The result has been that we have the Satithita text, as it came from the hands of its redactors, and as the changes made by them can generally be detected by disturbances of the metre, we can restore the collection to es sentially the form in which it previously ex isted. Of different Whets of the Rig Veda only one has been preserved, that of the Pleolas.
The Sama Veda (from saman, a chant) is a collection of the words to be used by the Udga tar at the soma sacrifice. It contains 1,549 stanzas, all except 75 of which occur also in the Rig Veda. Historically, therefore, it is the least important of the Sathhitas. In accord ance with the purpose of the Sinn Veda they stand not in their original context but in the order of their liturgical employment. The Sarithiti, exhibits these verses simply in the form of the stanzas (lags) that form the basis of the melodies. They acquire their proper character of Samans only in the Ganas or song books, where the prolongations, repetitions and additional syllables required by the music are noted. As each stanza could be chanted in a great variety of ways, the number of Samans is practically unlimited. The text has come down to us in the recensions of two schools, namely, the Rapayaniyas and the Kauthumas, while of the song books four are known, namely, the Gramageyagana, the Aranyagana, the Uhagana, and the Uhyagana.