ORIENTAL SERIES.

INTRODUCTION.
THE Aryan settlers on the banks of the Indus and in the land
of the Five Eivers were possessors of a large number of hymns
addressed to the elements and powers of nature. Some of these
hymns they no doubt brought from their earlier homes in the
West, but others were composed after they had reached the
land of their adoption. These ancient hymns cover a long
period, the length and the era of which can only be conjectured,
but fifteen hundred years before Christ is about the mean of
the various ages assigned to them The hymns form what is
called the .BKg-veda Sanhita, a collection which embraces all the
extant compositions of the early Aryans. It is the J&g-veda
which is of primary importance in Hindu religion and mytho-
logy ; the other Vedas are later in date,
and the second and
third Vedas consist almost exclusively of hymns derived "from
the Ri& but specially arranged for religious purposes. The
fourth or Atharva-veda borrows less from the T&g-veda, but it
is considerably later in date, and is of a different character.
The Aryan hymns of the Veda embody the ideas of the
Indian immigrants. These ideas were inherited from their
forefathers* They were originally the property
of the united
progenitors of the Aryan races, and the offshoots of this great
human stock have spread their primitive ideas over a large por-
tion of the earth. In the Vedic hymns the ideas and myths
appear in their simplest and freshest forms, directly connected
with the sources from which they sprang by clear ties of lan-
guage. Comparative philology and mythology go hand in hand;
and as the language of the Vedas has proved the great critical
instrument in the construction of the science of philology, so the