ORIENTAL SERIES.

VEDA. 347
handsome, and riding in a golden car as precursors of the
dawn. Pnthivi, '
the broad one/ as the earth was called, re-
ceived honour as the mother of all beings.
There were also the
Maruts or storm-gods, personifications of the wind, the especial
foes of Yntra, the spirit of drought and ungenial weather, who
was in constant conflict with Indra ; Eudra, the howling, furious
god, who ruled the tempest and the storm ; Yama, the god of
the dead and judge of departed spirits, also received his meed of
reverence ; last, though apparently not least in the estimation of
the Aryan worshippers, was Soma, the personification of the fer-
mented juice of the plant so named. This exhilarating liquid
was alike acceptable to the gods and their worshippers, and many
hymns are addressed to it as a deity.
To each hymn of the jRig-veda there is prefixed
the name of
the JMshi to whom it was revealed, as Yasishha, Yiswamitra,
Bharadwaja, and many others ; and these sages are frequently
spoken of as authors of the hymns bearing their names. It is
quite unknown when the hymns were first committed to writing.
They were transmitted orally from generation to generation, and
continued to be so handed down even after they had been
collected
'
and arranged by Krishna Dwaipayana, the arranger.'
The oral teaching of the Vedas produced what are called the
$akhas or '
schools '
of the Yedas. Different learned men, or
bodies of men, became famous for their particular versions of
the text, and taught these versions to their respective pupils.
These different versions constitute the Sakhas ; they present, as
might be expected, many verbal variations, but no very material
discrepancies.
"The poetry of the jRig-veda," says Professor Cowell, " is
remarkably deficient in that simplicity and natural pathos or
sublimity which we naturally look for in the songs of an early
period of civilisation. The language and style of most of the
we meet with
hymns is singularly artificial. . . . Occasionally
fine outbursts of poetry, especially
in the hymns addressed to
and as a rule we
tho dawn, but these are never long sustained ;
find few grand similes or metaphors." A similar opinion is
expressed by Professor Williams, who finds them " to abound
more in puerile ideas than in striking thoughts and lofty
conceptions."
The Yajur or second Yeda ie composed almost exclusively of