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were in great part, if not wholly, anterior. They are prior in all probability to the heroic poems, the Rámáyana and Mahábhárata, as we have no allusions to the demigods and heroes whom they celebrate; no allusion to Krishna and Ráma, although the latter name occurs as that of a Brahman, the son or a descendant of Bhrigu, which has nothing to do with Ráma, the son of king Daśaratha, any more than the name of Krishna, which occurs in the Sanhitá as the name of an Asura, implies any allusion to the Krishna of the Mahábhárata. There is no reference to any controversial opposition to the doctrines, or rites of Brahmanical Hinduism, although differences of opinion as to the purport of the performance of some ceremonies are adverted to, and so far therefore, we have no reference to Buddhism. Again, the Aitareya Bráhmana is prior to the Sútras, or rules for conducting religious rites, ascribed to Áśwalayana, Baudháyana, and others who are undoubtedly authors of a remote period. It is, perhaps, not far from the period of the oldest passages in the laws of Manu, in some of which we find allusions to the narratives of the Bráh
mana, as in the case of Sunahsepha, and also of a prince named Paijavana, who is not named in later works. In the etymology also of the term jáyá, a wife, as one in whom a man is born again in the person of a son, we have the very same words'. The
ON HUMAN SACRIFICES IN THE
+
[VII, 41 f. X, 105 ff. Mahábh. XII, 2304, quoted by Weber, Ind. Stud., II, 194.]
1 Manu, b. IX, v. S.
