ncumbent upon us to seek to make such a division of the
hymns as shall illustrate our words. But we shall not attempt to do
this here, because the distinction between late mechanical and poetic
hymns is either very evident, and it would be superfluous to burden
the pages with the trash contained in the former,[1] or the
distinction is one liable to reversion at the hands of those critics
whose judgment differs from ours, for there are of course some hymns
that to one may seem poetical and to another, artificial. Moreover, we
admit that hymns of true feeling may be composed late as well as
early, while as to beauty of style the chances are that the best
literary production will be found among the latest rather than among
the earliest hymns.

It would, indeed, be admissible, if one had any certainty in regard to
the age of the different parts of the Rig Veda, simply to divide the
hymns into early, middle, and late, as they are sometimes divided in
philological works, but here one rests on the weakest of all supports
for historical judgment, a linguistic and metrical basis, when one is
ignorant alike of what may have been accomplished by imitation, and of
the work of those later priests who remade the poems of their
ancestors.

Best then, because least hazardous, appears to be the method which we
have followed, namely, to take up group by group the most important
deities arranged in the order of their relative importance, and by
studying each to arrive at a fair understanding of the pantheon as a
whole. The Hindus themselves divided their gods into highest, middle,
and lowest, or those of the upper sky, the atmosphere, and the earth.
This division, from the point of view of one who would enter into the
spirit of the seers and at the same time keep in mind the changes to
which that spirit gradually was subjected, is an excellent one. For,
as will be seen, although the earlier order of regard may have been
from below upwards, this order does not apply to the literary
monuments. These show on the contrary a worship which steadily tends
from above earthwards; and the three periods into which may be divided
all Vedic theology are first that of the special worship of sky-gods,
when less attention is paid to others; then that of the atmospheric
and meteorological divinities; and finally that of terrestrial powers,
each later group absorbing, so to speak, the earlier, and therewith
preparing the developing Hindu intelligence for