ched to these works, and in some cases to the
Samhitas, are two kinds of appendages, the Aranyakas and Upanishads, the
former of which deal generally with the more recondite rites, while the
latter are taken up chiefly with speculations on the problems of the
universe and the religious aims of man--subjects often touched upon in
the earlier writings, but here dealt with in a more mature and
systematic way. Two of the _Samhitas_, the _Saman_ and the _Yajus_,
owing their existence to purely ritual purposes, and being, besides, the
one almost entirely, the other partly, composed of verses taken from the
_Rigveda_, are only of secondary importance for our present inquiry. The
hymns of the _Rigveda_ constitute the earliest lyrical effusions of the
Aryan settlers in India which have been handed down to posterity. They
are certainly not all equally old; on the contrary they evidently
represent the literary activity of many generations of bards, though
their relative age cannot as yet be determined with anything like
certainty. The tenth (and last) book of the collection, however, at any
rate has all the characteristics of a later appendage, and in language
and spirit many of its hymns approach very nearly to the level of the
contents of the _Atharvan_. Of the latter collection about one-sixth is
found also in the _Rigveda_, and especially in the tenth book; the
larger portion peculiar to it, though including no doubt some older
pieces, appears to owe its origin to an age not long anterior to the
composition of the _Brahmanas_.

The state of religious thought among the ancient bards, as reflected in
the hymns of the _Rigveda_, is that of a worship of the grand and
striking phenomena of nature regarded in the light of personal conscious
beings, endowed with a power beyond the control of man, though not
insensible to his praises and actions. It is a nature worship purer than
that met with in any other polytheistic form of belief we are acquainted
with--a mythology still comparatively little affected by those
systematizing tendencies which, in a less simple and primitive state of
thought, lead to the construction of a well-ordered pantheon and a
regular organization of divine government. To the mind of the early
Vedic worshipper the various departments of the surrounding nature are
not as yet clearly defined, and the functions which he assigns to their
divine representatives continually flow into one another. Nor has he yet
learne