.

The idea of revelation, and I mean more particularly book-revelation,
is not a modern idea, nor is it an idea peculiar to Christianity.
Though we look for it in vain in the literature of Greece and Rome, we
find the literature of India saturated with this idea from beginning
to end. In no country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been
so minutely elaborated as in India. The name for revelation in
Sanskrit is _S_ruti, which means hearing; and this title distinguishes
the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Brahma_n_as also, from all
other works, which, however sacred, and authoritative to the Hindu
mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors. The Laws of
Manu, for instance, according to the Brahmanic theology, are not
revelation; they are not _S_ruti, but only Sm_r_iti, which means
recollection or tradition. If these laws or any other work of
authority can be proved on any point to be at variance with a single
passage of the Veda, their authority is at once overruled. According
to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the
Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or
other the work of the Deity; and even those who received the
revelation, or, as they express it, those who saw it, were not
supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of
common humanity, and less liable therefore to error in the reception
of revealed truth. The views entertained of revelation by the orthodox
theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of
the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The human
element, called paurusheyatva in Sanskrit, is driven out of every
corner or hiding-place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the
mind of the Deity before the beginning of time, every allusion to
historical events, of which there are not a few, is explained away
with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.

But let me state at once that there is nothing in the hymns themselves
to warrant such extravagant theories. In many a hymn the author says
plainly that he or his friends made it to please the gods; that he
made it, as a carpenter makes a chariot (Rv. I. 130, 6; V. 2, 11), or
like a beautiful vesture (Rv. V. 29, 15); that he fashioned it in his
heart and kept it in his mind (Rv. I. 171, 2); that he expects, as his
reward, the favour of the god whom he celebrates (Rv. IV. 6, 21). But
though the poets of