Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/43

The Veda
27
language of the Veda. It is based upon a very old
popular dialect, into which the poets, to serve their
own needs, have introduced many new words and
speech-forms. So, for instance, the great liking of the
hieratic language for verbs derived from nouns, the
so-called denominative or denominal verbs, surrounds
the style of the Rig-Veda with an air of turgidity
and stiltedness which is far from being archaic. A
hieratic poet prefers to say "give battle "(prtanayati,
prtanyati), rather than "fight"; "cultivate the
gods" (devayati), rather than "be pious"; "show
a kind disposition" (sumanasyate), rather than "be
friendly," etc.
A little over 1000 hymns, containing about 10,000
stanzas, equal in bulk to Homer's poems, are divided
into ten mandalas, " circles," or, as we should say,
books. Inside of these books the hymns are arranged
according to a regular scheme: first, in the order of
the number of hymns addressed to a particular god,
beginning with the largest number and continuing in
a descending scale. Next, each god's hymns are
arranged according to the length of each single hymn,
again in a descending scale. Six of these ten books
(ii-vii), the so-called "family-books," form the nucleus
of the collection. Each of these is supposed to
have been composed by a different Rishi, poet or
seer, or rather by some family of poets who would