32 The Religion of the Veda

power controlled and guided by the wonderful tech nique of the priests, and their still more wonderful insight into the meaning of all the technical sets A crowd of priestsmscvcntccn is the largest number mconduct sn interminable ceremonial full of sym~ bolic rooming down to its smallest Ininntim. The priests scat. themselves on the sacrificial ground strewn with blades of sacred doréfimgrass, and mark out the altars on which the sacred fires are built. T hey handle and arrange the utensils and sncrificisl substances. And then they proceed to give to the gods of the sacrifice, each his prepcr oblstion and his proper share. Even the least and most trivial “act has its stanza. or formula, and every utensil is blessed with its own particular blessing. These stanzas and formulas, to which a. description of the rites is more or less directly attached, make up the numerous redsctions of this Veda.

The YajunVecla. is a later collection in the main, though it contains much substance that is old, old enough, indeed, to be prehistoric. But like all other Vedic collections, its redaction, at any rate, pro supposes the Rig-Veda. A good many verses of the Rig-Veda reappear in the Yojuereda, usually not in the exact form of the Rig~Vcds, but taken out of their connection, and altered and adapted to new ends which were foreign to the mind of the