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with foreign nations, notably the Greek, from which has been borrowed, perhaps, the classical Hindu drama,[3]—there is no real literature that was not religious originally, or, at least, so apt for priestly use as to become chiefly moral and theosophic; while the most popular works of modern times are sectarian tracts, Pur[=]nas, Tantras and remodelled worldly poetry. The sources, then, from which is to be drawn the knowledge of Hindu religions are the best possible—the original texts. The information furnished by foreigners, from the times of Ktesias and Megasthenes to that of Mandelslo, is considerable; but one is warranted in assuming that what little in it is novel is inaccurate, since otherwise the information would have been furnished by the Hindus themselves; and that, conversely, an outsider's statements, although presumably correct, often may give an inexact impression through lack of completeness; as when—to take an example that one can control-Ktesias tells half the truth in regard to ordeals. His account is true, but he gives no notion of the number or elaborate character of these interesting
ceremonies.
The sources to which we shall have occasion to refer will be, then, the two most important collections of Vedic hymns—the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda; the Brahmanic literature, with the supplementary Upanishads, and the S[=u]tras or mnemonic abridgments of religious and ceremonial rules; the legal texts, and the religious and theological portions of the epic; and the later sectarian writings, called Pur[=a]nas. The great heresies, again, have their own special writings. Thus far we shall draw on the native literature. Only for some of the modern sects, and for the religions of the wild tribes which have no literature, shall we have to depend on the accounts of European writers.
DATES.
For none of the native religious works has one a certain date. Nor is there for any one of the earlier compositions the certainty that it belongs, as a whole, to any one time. The Rig Veda was composed by successive generations; the Atharvan represents different ages; each Br[=a]hmana appears to belong in part to one era, in part to another; the
