priest, found the law book in the sanctuary (2
Kings xxii. 8). But the Veda, with its ten books or _Mandalas_, its
1017 hymns or _Suktas_, with every consonant and vowel and accent
plainly written, was a different thing. It may safely be called a
book. No doubt it existed for a long time, as it does even at present,
in oral tradition, but as it was in tradition, so it was when reduced
to writing, and in either form I doubt whether any other real book can
rival it in antiquity. More important, however, than the purely
chronological antiquity of the book, is the antiquity or primitiveness
of the thoughts which it contains. If the people of the Veda did not
turn out to be quite such savages as was hoped and expected, they
nevertheless disclosed to us a layer of thought which can be explored
nowhere else. The Vedic poets were not ashamed of exposing their fear
that the sun might tumble down from the sky, and there are no other
poets, as far as I know, who still trembled at the same not quite
unnatural thought. Nor do I find even savages who still wonder and
express their surprise that black cows should produce white milk. Is
not that childish enough for any ancient or modern savage? Mere
chronology is here of as little avail as with modern savages, whose
customs and beliefs, though known as but of yesterday, are represented
to us as older than the Veda, older than Babylonian cylinders, older
than anything written. When certain modern savages recognize the
relationship of paternity, maternity, and consanguinity, this is
called very ancient. If they admit traditional restrictions as to
marriage, food, the treatment of the dead, nay, even a life to come,
this too, no doubt, may be very old; but it may be of yesterday also.
There are even quite new gods, whose genesis has been watched by
living missionaries. The great difficulty in all such researches is to
distinguish between what is common to human nature, and what is really
inherited or traditional. All such questions have only as yet been
touched upon, and they must wait for their answer till real scholars
will take up the study of the language of living savages, in the same
scholarlike spirit in which they have taken up the study of Vedic and
Babylonian savages. But we must have patience and learn to wait. It
has been a favourite idea among anthropologists that the savage races
inhabiting parts of India give us a correct idea of what the Aryans of
India were before they wer