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24 Works of Pandit Guru Datta Vidyarthi
these words not in their
yaugika,
but in their
rurhi
sense. It is clear,
then, that if Max Muller had kept in view the canon of
interpretation given in Nirukta, that all Vedic words are
yaugika,
he
would not
have
fallen into the fallacious anachronism of assigning
different periods to different parts of the Vedas.
But there is another prejudice which is cherished by many
scholars evidently under the impression of its being a well-
recognised scientific doctrine. It is that in the ruder stages of
civilization, when laws of nature are little known and but very little
understood, when mankind has not enough of the experience of
the world, strict methods of correct reasoning are very seldom
observed. On the other hand, analogy plays a most important part
in the performance of intellectual functions of man.
The slightest semblance, or visage of semblance, is enough
to justify the
exercise
of analogy. The most
palpable
of the forces of
nature impress the human mind, in such a period of rude beginnings
of human experience, by motions mainly. The wind blowing, the
fire burning, a stone falling, or a fruit dropping, affects the senses
essentially as moving. Now, throughout the range of conscious
exertion of muscular power,
will
precedes motion, and since even
the most grotesque experience of a savage in this world assumes
this knowledge, it is no great stretch of intellectual power to argue
that these natural forces also, to which the sensible motions are due,
are endowed with the faculty of will. The personification of the
forces of nature being thus effected, their deification soon follows.
The overwhelming potency, the unobstructible might, and often the
violence with which, in the sight of a savage, these forces operate,
strike him with terror, awe and reverence. A sense of his own
weakness, humility and inferiority creeps over the savage mind,
and, what is intellectually personified, becomes emotionally deified.
According to this view, the Vedas, undoubtedly books of primitive
times, consist of prayers from such an emotional character
addressed to the forces of nature including wind and rain— prayers
breathing passions of the savage for vengeance or for propitiation
or in moments of poetic exaltation, hymns simply portraying the
simple phenomena of nature in the personified language of
mythology.
It is, therefore, more agreeable for these scholars to believe
that the Vedas, no doubt books of primitive times, are records of