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The Terminology of the Vedas and European Scholars 31
between
Chhandas
and
Mantra,
regarding the latter as belonging to the
secondary age, as loaded with technicalities, and as being less
perspicuous than the former. He points out its chief character to be
that "these songs are generally intended for sacrificial purposes."
Concerning this
Mantra
period, he says, "One specimen may suffice, a
hymn describing the sacrifice of the horse with the full detail of a
superstitious ceremonial (Rv.i. 162)."
We shall therefore quote the 162nd Sukta of Rigveda, as it is
the specimen hymn of Max Muller, with his translation, and show
how, due to a defective knowledge of Vedic literature and to the
rejection of the principle that Vedic terms are all
yaugika,
Professor
Max Milner translates a purely scientific hymn, distinguishable in
no characteristics from the
Chhandas
of the Vedas, as representative
of an
artificial, cumbersome
and
highly superstitious
ritual or
ceremonial.
To our thinking, Muller's interpretation is so very incongruous,
unintelligible, and superficial, that were the interpretation even
regarded as
possible,
it could never be conceived as the description of
an
actual
ceremonial. And now to the hymn. The first
mantra
runs
thus:
Trr f 1
qt>uil
aTzirrrzfr wilvr
Trm:
off 91
7r-gri
-
491
aeismit-R,4
va: -gam* raq4
catkin(
IR iMR
Max Muller translates it, "May
Mitra, Varuna,
Aryaman, Ayu,
Indra, the Lord of Ribhus, and the Maruts not rebuke us because
we shall proclaim at the sacrifice the virtues of the swift horse
sprung from the gods."*
That the above interpretation may be regarded as real or as
true, let Professor Max Muller prove that Aryans of the Vedic times
entertained the superstition that at least one swift horse had sprung
from the gods, also that the gods
Mitra, Varuna,
Aryaman, Ayu,
Indra, the Lord of Ribhus and the Maruts, did not like to hear the
virtues of the swift horse proclaimed at the sacrifice, for if otherwise,
they would have no reason to rebuke the poet. Not one of these
positions it is ever possible to entertain with validity. Even the
most diseased conception of a savage shrinks from such a
superstition as the "swift horse sprung from the gods." It is also in
vain to refer for the verification of this position to the
ashwamedha
of
* Max Muller, A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 507.