of which we
knew absolutely nothing before the discovery of the Vedas.[127]

But even thus our path is not yet clear. Other objections have been
raised against the Veda as an historical document. Some of them are
important; and I have at times shared them myself. Others are at least
instructive, and will give us an opportunity of testing the foundation
on which we stand.

The first objection then against our treating the Veda as an
historical document is that it is not truly national in its character,
and does not represent the thoughts of the whole of the population of
India, but only of a small minority, namely of the Brahmans, and not
even of the whole class of Brahmans, but only of a small minority of
them, namely of the professional priests.

Objections should not be based on demands which, from the nature of
the case, are unreasonable. Have those who maintain that the Vedic
hymns do not represent the whole of India, that is the whole of its
ancient population, in the same manner as they say that the Bible
represents the Jews or Homer the Greeks, considered what they are
asking for? So far from denying that the Vedic hymns represent only a
small and, it may be, a priestly minority of the ancient population of
India, the true historian would probably feel inclined to urge the
same cautions against the Old Testament and the Homeric poems also.

No doubt, after the books which compose the Old Testament had been
collected as a Sacred Canon, they were known to the majority of the
Jews. But when we speak of the primitive state of the Jews, of their
moral, intellectual, and religious status while in Mesopotamia or
Canaan or Egypt, we should find that the different books of the Old
Testament teach us as little of the whole Jewish race, with all its
local characteristics and social distinctions, as the Homeric poems do
of all the Greek tribes, or the Vedic hymns of all the inhabitants of
India. Surely, even when we speak of the history of the Greeks or the
Romans, we know that we shall not find there a complete picture of the
social, intellectual, and religious life of a whole nation. We know
very little of the intellectual life of a whole nation, even during
the Middle Ages, ay, even at the present day. We may know something of
the generals, of the commanders-in-chief, but of the privates, of the
millions, we know next to nothing. And what we do know of kings or
generals or ministers is mostly no more than what was th