y them as helpful spirits, and a little about
some vague spirits who are in the sun and the air and the fire and
other places, and are very high and great, but are not interesting at
all.

This popular religion seems to be a hopeless one, without ideals and
symbols of love and hope. Is there nothing better to be found in this
place? Yes, there is a priestly religion also; and if we would know
something about it we must listen to the chanting of the priests, the
_brahmans_ or men of the "holy spirit," as they are called, who are
holding a sacrifice now on behalf of the rich lord who lives in the
largest house in the village--a service for which they expect to be
paid with a handsome fee of oxen and gold. They are priests by
heredity, wise in the knowledge of the ways of the gods; some of them
understand how to compose _riks_, or hymns, in the fine speech dear to
their order, hymns which are almost sure to win the gods' favour, and
all of them know how the sacrifices shall be performed with perfect
exactness so that no slip or imperfection may mar their efficacy.
Their psalms are called _Rig-veda_, "lore of the verses," and they set
themselves to find grace in the ears of the many gods whom these
priests worship, sometimes by open praise and sometimes by riddling
description of the exploits and nature of the gods. Often they are
very fine; but always they are the work of priests, artists in ritual.
And if you look heedfully into it you will also mark that these
priests are inclined to think that the act of sacrifice, the offering
of, say, certain oblations in a particular manner with particular
words accompanying them, is in itself potent, quite apart from the
psalms which they sing over it, that it has a magic power of its own
over the machinery of nature.[1] Really this is no new idea of our
Vedic priests; ten thousand years before them their remote forefathers
believed it and acted upon it, and if for example they wanted rain
they would sprinkle drops of water and utter magic words. Our Vedic
priests have now a different kind of symbols, but all the same they
still have the notion that ceremony, _rita_ as they call it, has a
magic potency of its own. Let us mark this well, for we shall see much
issuing from it.

[Footnote 1: Cf. e.g. RV. III. xxxii. 12.]

Who are the gods to whom these priests offer their prayers and psalms?
They are many, and of various kinds. Most of them are taken from the
religion of the people