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ANCIENT RELIGION OF INDIA.
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system, and if, as is likely it may be, it is to be received as a type of other similar compilations, conforming as it does accurately enough to the general description, we shall be authorized to draw the same inference with respect to all, and to separate the Brahmañas from the Hindu religion as it appears in the Sanhitás, or collections of the prayers and hymns.
The Aitareya Brahmana, as will have been observed in the translation of the legend of Sunahsepha, refers to the lymns or Súktas of the Sanhitá, specifying the number of verses in which he was fabled to have addressed the gods, agreeably to their order and place in the Sanhitá. Again, in stating that he taught to the priests the manner of offering libations, it quotes the leading phrases of different Súktas which are to be found in different and distant portions of the Sanhitá. This, it may be observed, is in strict agreement with the general arrangement of the Brahmanas: directions are given for the performance of various religious rites, and the hymns, or portions of the hymns which are to be repeated on such occasions, are quoted in the same manner, merely by a few initial phrases, and taken from separate and unconnected parts of the Sanlitá, very commonly having little relation to the actual ceremony.
Now the fact, and still more, the manner of quoting the texts of the Sanhita, necessarily lead to the conclusion, that the Sanhits must have existed in its present form before the compilation of the Brálmana was undertaken, and as it inust have been widely
