punishment is derived from Persia (_Eranische
Altherthumskunde_, I. p. 458), but his point of view is
naturally prejudiced. The allusion to the supposed
Babylonian coin, _man[=a]_, in RV. VIII. 78. 2, would
indicate that the relation with Babylon is one of trade, as
with Aegypt. The account of the flood may be drawn thence,
so may the story of Deucalion, but both Hindu and Hellenic
versions may be as native as is that of the American
redskins.]

[Footnote 29: IV. 17. 17.]

[Footnote 30: _loc. cit._ pp. 70, 480.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX.

BRAHMANISM.

Besides the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda there are two others, called
respectively the S[=a]ma Veda and the Yajur Veda.[1] The former
consists of a small collection of verses, which are taken chiefly from
the eighth and ninth books of the Rig Veda, and are arranged for
singing. It has a few more verses than are contained in the
corresponding parts of the Rik, but the whole is of no added
importance from the present point of view. It is of course made
entirely for the ritual. Also made for the ritual is the Yajur Veda,
the Veda of sacrificial formulae. But this Veda is far more important.
With it one is brought into a new land, and into a world of ideas that
are strange to the Rik. The period represented by it is a sort of
bridge between the Rik and the Br[=a]hmanas. The Yajus is later than
Rik or Atharvan, belonging in its entirety more to the age of the
liturgy than to the older Vedic era. With the Br[=a]hmanas not only is
the tone changed from that of the Rig Veda; the whole moral atmosphere
is now surcharged with hocus-pocus, mysticism, religiosity, instead of
the cheerful, real religion which, however formal, is the soul of the
Rik. In the Br[=a]hmanas there is no freshness, no poetry. There is in
some regards a more scrupulous outward morality, but for the rest
there is only cynicism, bigotry, and dullness. It is true that each of
these traits may be found in certain parts of the Rig Veda, but it is
not true that they represent there the spirit of the age, as they do
in the Brahmanic period. Of this Brahmanic stoa, to which we now turn,
the Yajur Veda forms the fitting entrance. Here the priest is as much
lord as he is in the Br[=a]hmanas. Here the sacrifice is only the act,
the sacrificial forms (_yajus_), without the spirit.

In distinction from the verse-Veda (the