more important than any other. For one has
almost no criteria, with which to discover whether the hymns precede
or follow the ritual, other than the linguistic posteriority of the
ritualistic literature, and the knowledge that there were priests with
a ritual when some of the hymns were composed. The bare fact that
hymns are found rubricated in the later literature is surely no reason
for believing that such hymns were made for the ritual. Now while it
can be shown that a large number of hymns are formal, conventional,
and mechanical in expression, and while it may be argued with
plausibility that these were composed to serve the purpose of an
established cult, this is very far from being the case with many
which, on other grounds, may be supposed to belong severally to the
older and later part of the Rig Veda. Yet does the new school, in
estimating the hymns, never admit this. The poems always are spoken of
as 'sacerdotal', ritualistic, without the slightest attempt to see
whether this be true of all or of some alone. We claim that it is not
historical, it is not judicious from a literary point of view, to
fling indiscriminately together the hymns that are evidently
ritualistic and those of other value; for, finally, it is a sober
literary judgment that is the court of appeals in regard to whether
poetry be poetry or not. Now let one take a hymn containing, to make
it an unexceptionable example, nothing very profound or very
beautiful. It is this well-known

HYMN TO THE SUN (_Rig Veda_, I. 50).

Aloft this all-wise[22] shining god
His beams of light are bearing now,
That every one the sun may see.

Apart, as were they thieves, yon stars,
Together with the night[23], withdraw
Before the sun, who seeth all.

His beams of light have been beheld
Afar, among [all] creatures; rays
Splendid as were they [blazing] fires,

Impetuous-swift, beheld of all,
Of light the maker, thou, O Sun,
Thou all the gleaming [sky] illum'st.

Before the folk of shining gods
Thou risest up, and men before,
'Fore all--to be as light beheld;

[To be] thine eye, O pure bright Heaven,
Wherewith amid [all] creatures born
Thou gazest down on busy [man].

Thou goest across the sky's broad place,
Meting with rays, O Sun, the days,
And watching generations pass.

The steeds are seven that at thy car
Bear up the god whose hair is flame
O shining god, O Sun far-seen!

Yoked hath he no