62 The Religion of the Veda

humanity. This stately gathering of more than a thousand hymns was viewed as a historical collection, Just as the hymns were composed by poets, so the collection and reduction of the RigVoda was sup— posed to have been undertaken by persons of literary taste and rotlactoriul diligence, apparently in order to save these precious monuments for the aesthetic: delight of posterity.

One cannot now help wondering to whet station in life might have belonged these early poets. I can only think of rhapsodists from out of the people, seized on occasion by the divine frenzy, perclmnee some village barbermold and semi—religious function” ary in the Hindu village-mot some village Hans Sachs,

“shoe-

maker and a poet too ” as we may translate the German doggerel.‘ Unless, still less likely, Vodic poetry was the child of the muse of some Raja’s poet laureate, “given to infinite tobacco,” eager, as he took: the air under one of those huge banyanutrees large enough to hold a village, to bag some good sub- ject for the delectation of the court of his patron. Delightful as might be some such romantic a. View to the student of a literature that requires the devotion

3' “ Hans Sachs war ein Schuhs Macher and Foot dam."

~ or Efi‘em ,