their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can
be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the
intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of
the Aitareya-brahma_n_a. The difficulty was not to translate the text
word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of
the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for
persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic
sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites.
If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who
had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in
spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to
convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he
ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is
one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can
well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely
described in the Brahma_n_as and the Sutras, yet, without having seen
the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars
constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different
priests--the _tout-ensemble_, in fact, of the sacred rites--the reader
seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to
reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to
be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the
more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals,
and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual
performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into
the spirit of the speculations on the mysterious meaning of these
rituals, which are embodied in the so-called Brahma_n_as, or 'the
sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened
exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College
of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite
sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from
Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the
secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the
ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had
hardly suspected,--the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the
ancient Vedic ritual:

'Seeing the great difficulties, nay, impo