ions prove to be separated by an
interval of many centuries. But the stage of social and religious
culture indicated in the Vedic hymns may have begun long before they
were composed, and rites and deities common to Indians and Iranians
existed before the reforms of Zoroaster[142].

It may seem that everything is uncertain in this literature without
dates or authors and that the growth of religion in India cannot be
scientifically studied. The difficulties are indeed considerable but
they are materially reduced by the veneration in which the ancient
scriptures were held, and by the retentiveness of memory and devotion to
grammar, if not to history, which have characterized the Brahmans for at
least twenty-five centuries. The authenticity of certain Vedic texts is
guaranteed not only by the quotations found in later works, but by
treatises on phonetics, grammar and versification as well as by indices
which give the number of words in every book, chapter and verse. We may
be sure that we possess not perhaps the exact words of the Vedic poets,
but what were believed about 600 B.C. to be their exact words, and there
is no reason to doubt that this is a substantially correct version of
the hymns as recited several centuries earlier[143].

In drawing any deductions from the hymns of the Rig Veda it must be
remembered that it is the manual of the Hotri priests[144]. This does
not affect the age or character of the single pieces: they may have been
composed at very different dates and they are not arranged in the order
in which the priest recites them. But the liturgical character of the
compilation does somewhat qualify its title to give a complete picture
of religion. One could not throw doubt on a ceremony of the Church,
still less on a popular custom, because it was not mentioned in the
missal, and we cannot assume that ideas or usages not mentioned in the
Rig Veda did not exist at the time when it was composed.

We have no other Sanskrit writings contemporary with the older parts of
the Rig Veda, but the roots of epic poetry stretch far back and ballads
may be as old as hymns, though they neither sought nor obtained the
official sanction of the priesthood. Side by side with Vedic tradition,
unrecorded Epic tradition built up the figures of Siva, Rama and Krishna
which astonish us by their sudden appearance in later literature only
because their earlier phases have not been preserved.

The Vedic hymns were probably collec