imperfection may mar their efficacy. Their psalms are called Ṛig-vēda, "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 Vēdic 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 Vēdic priests have now a different kind of symbols, but all the same they still have the notion that ceremony, ṛita as they call it, has a magic potency of its own. Let us mark this well, for we shall see much issuing from it.
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
- ↑ Cf. e.g. RV. III. xxxii. 12.
