not far advanced in material arts but,
considering the date, humane and civilized. There were no towns but
merely villages and fortified enclosures to be used as refuges in case
of necessity. The general tone of the hymns is kindly and healthy; many
of them indeed have more robust piety than interest. There are few
indications of barbarous customs. The general impression is of a free
and joyous life in which the principal actors are chiefs and priests,
though neither have become tyrannical.

The composition of this anthology probably extended over several
centuries and comprised a period of lively mental growth. It is
therefore natural that it should represent stages of religious
development which are not contemporaneous. But though thought is active
and exuberant in these poems they are not altogether an intellectual
outburst excited by the successful advance into India. The calm of
settlement as well as the fire of conquest have left their mark on them
and during the period of composition religion grew more boldly
speculative but also more sedentary, formal and meticulous. The earliest
hymns bear traces of quasi-nomadic life, but the writers are no longer
nomads. They follow agriculture as well as pasturage, but they are still
contending with the aborigines: still expanding and moving on. They
mention no states or capitals: they revere rivers and mountains but have
no shrines to serve as religious centres, as repositories and factories
of tradition. Legends and precepts have of course come down from earlier
generations, but are not very definite or cogent: the stories of ancient
sages and warriors are vague and wanting in individual colour.

2

The absence of sculpture and painting explains much in the character of
the Vedic deities. The hymn-writers were devout and imaginative, not
content to revere some undescribed being in the sky, but full of
mythology, metaphor and poetry and continually singling out new powers
for worship. Among many races the conceptions thus evolved acquire
solidity and permanence by the aid of art. An image stereotypes a deity,
worshippers from other districts can see it and it remains from
generation to generation as a conservative and unifying force. Even a
stone may have something of the same effect, for it connects the deity
with the events, rites and ideas of a locality. But the earliest stratum
of Vedic religion is worship of the powers of nature--such as the Sun,
the Sky, the Dawn