Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 234

RELIGION— ANINISM
213
evidence all tend to show that-certainly all the time we are here considering, and alınost certainly at the time when the Rig Veda was finally closedthere were many other beliefs, commonly held ainong the Aryans in India, but not represented in that Veda.'
The first of thoss hree lines is the history of the Atharva Veda. This invaluable old collection of charms to be used in sorcery had been actually put together long before Buddhism arose. But it was only just before that time that it had come to be acknowledged by the sacrificial priests as a Vedainferior to their own three older ones, but still a Veda. This explains why it is that the Atharva is never mentioned as a Veda in the Buddhist canonical books. They are constantly mentioning the three Vedas and the ancient lore connected with the three. They are constantly poking fun at the hocus pocus of witchcraft and sorcery, and denying any efficiency either to it, or to the magic of the sacrifice. But in the view of the circles in which these books arose the Atharva collection had not yet become a Veda.
Yet it is quite certain that the beliefs and practices to which the Atharva Veda is devoted are as old, if not older, than those to which the three other Vedas refer; and that they were commonly held and followed by the Aryans in India. The things re. corded in the Rig may seem to us as absurd as
On religious ideas popular among the people, but only incident. ally referred to in the Veda, and not admitted into it as part of the priestly system of belief, see Kirste in the Vienna Oriental Journal, 1902, pp. 63, foll. ? See Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 109.