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ON HUMAN SACRIFICES IN THE
current and familiarly known, or the citation of broken and isolated texts could neither have been adopted nor verifiable, it must bave assumed its actual arrangement long anterior to the compilation of the Bráhmanas. But the Sanhitá itself is of a date long subsequent to its component parts. There is no doubt of the accuracy of the tradition that the hymns of the Vedas had long been current as single and iconnected compositions, preserved in families or schools by oral communication, probably for centuries; and that they were finally collected and arranged as we now have them, by a school or schools of learned Brahmans, of which Vyása (possibly an abstraction, as it means merely an arranger') was the nominal head. Allowing, therefore, a considerable period before the Sanhitás were collected into forin, and another interval before they could be familiarly referred to, it follows that the Brálmanas cannot be an integral part of the Veda, understanding thereby the expression of the primitive notions of the Hindus, and that they are not entitled to be classed as authorities for the oldest and most genuine system of Hindu worship.
In fact, in the Brahmanas we find fully developed the whole Brahmanical system, of much of which we have but faint and questionable indications in the Mantras. We have the whole body of both religious and social institutions -- a variety of practices alluded to of a more complicated texture than the apparently simple ritual of the Sanhitá; and the complete recognition both in name and practice of the different
