TAMAS marries the ten daughters of the Rájá. It may be doubted, however, if this was universally practised, as the institutor of a sacrifice is ordinarily associated with but one wife at its celebration; and at the Aswamedha, although four denominations of females are specified as the women of the Rájá, the first wedded is alone considered to be the Mahishi, or queen. The multiplicity of wives may have been a privilege of the Rishis-if, indeed, these two Hymns be not compositions of a later day, and foreign to the earliest purport of the Vedas. The same may be suspected of the Súkta that records the dialogue between AGASTYA and LOPAMUDRÁ (p. 174), although that has more of an air of antiquity, though somewhat out of place. As to the two last verses of the second of the Swanaya Súktas (p. 18), they are manifest incongruities, although they also may be old. The Hymn to Pitu (p. 192), nutrition or food, is merely fanciful. The Hymn to Water, Grass, and the Sun (p. 201), as antidotes to the venom of poisonous creatures, is somewhat dark and mystical, and offers various terms for the import of which there is no other authority than that of the scholiast. The general intention of it is, however, positively specified by competent authority with which the text offers nothing incompatible, and it expresses notions that are familiar still in popular credence. The same may be said of the two hymns to the Kapinjala, or partridge, as a bird of good omen (p. 316).

A Súkta, remarkable for its unusual extent of

fifty-two stanzas, and for the indeterminate application of the greater part of them, is conceived by SAYANA to convey the principal dogmas of the Vedanta philosophy, or the unity and universality of spirit, or Brahma: according to the Index, these stanzas are addressed to the Viswadevas; but their general bearing, though sometimes darkly denoted, is the glorification of the Sun, as identical with the divisions of time, or with time itself, and with the universe, as mentioned in the note (p. 126): all the verses of this Súkta occur also in the Atharva-Veda, with the style of which it agrees better than with that of the Rich, at least in general.

The most peculiar and remarkable, however, of the hymns contained in this Ashtaka, are the two of which the Aswamedha, or sacrifice of a horse, is the subject the rite as described in the Puráñas has been introduced to English poetry in the Curse of Kehama, correctly enough according to the authorities followed by Southey; but the main object of the ceremony,-the deposal of INDRA from the throne of Swarga, and the elevation of the sacrificer, after a hundred celebrations, to that rank, are fictions of a later date, uncountenanced by the Veda: even the doctrine of the Brahmañas, that the Aswamedha is to be celebrated by a monarch desirous of universal dominion, is not supported by these Hymns, any more than it is in the Rámáyana, where it is nothing more than the means of obtaining a son by the childless DASARATHA: as enjoined by the Rig-Veda, the object of the rite seems to

be no more than as usual with other rites, the acquiring of wealth and posterity; but as it is detailed in the Yajur-Veda, 22, 26, and more particularly in the Sutras of Kútyáyana (Aśwamedha 1-210), the object is the same as that of the Rámáyana or posterity, as one step towards which the principal queen, Kausalyá, in the poem, is directed to lie all night in closest contact with the dead steed: in the morning, when the queen is released from this disgusting, and in fact impossible, contiguity, a dialogue, as given in the Yajush, and in the Aswamedha section of the S'atapatha Bráhmaña, and as explained in the Sútras, takes place between the queen and the females accompanying or attendant upon her, and the principal priests, which, though brief, is in the highest degree both silly and obscene. We find no vestige, however, of these revolting impurities in the Rig- Veda, although it is authority for practices sufficiently coarse, and such as respectable Hindus of the present generation will find it difficult to credit as forming a part of the uncreated revelations of BRAHMÁ: other particulars which are found in the Sútras, and in the Rámáyana and Mahábhárata, as the infinite multiplication of victims, have no warrant from our text. That the horse is to be actually immolated admits of no question; that the body was cut up into fragments is also clear (pp. 116, 119); that these fragments were dressed, partly boiled, and partly roasted, is also indisputable (p. 117); and although the expressions may be differently understood, yet there is little

reason to doubt that part of the flesh was eaten by the assistants (p. 117), part presented as a burntoffering to the gods: the second of the two Súktas relating to the same sacrifice, deals less in matters of fact than the first, and is more or less mystical, but there is nothing in it that is incompatible with an actual immolation, and no reasonable doubt can be entertained that the early ritual of the Hindus did authorize the sacrifice of a horse, the details and objects of which were very soon grossly amplified and distorted: at the same time it is to be remarked that these two hymns are the only ones in the Rich that relate especially to the subject; from which it might be inferred that they belong to a different period, and that the rite was falling or had fallen into disuse, although it may have been revived subsequently in the time of the Sútras and of the heroic poems, in which the Aswamedha of the Mahábhárata takes a middle place, being in various essentials, particularly the part played by DRAUPADÍ, the same ceremony as that of the Rámáyana, whilst in others, as in the guardianship of the horse by ARJUNA, it is that of the Padma and other Puráñas (Mahábh. Aswamedha Parva). As the solemnity appears in the Rich, it bears a less poetical, a more barbaric character, and it may have been a relic of an ante-Vaidik period, imported from some foreign region, possibly from Scythia, where animal victims, and especially horses, were commonly sacrificed (Herod. IV. 71); the latter were also offered by the Massageta to the Sun (Ibid. I. 216); and in

the second Aswamedhik Hymn of the Rich there are several indications that the victim was especially consecrated to the solar deity: however this may be, the rite, as it appears in the Rig-Veda, can scarcely be considered as constituting an integral element of the archaic system of Hindu worship, although its recognition at all is significant of extant barbarism.

That this was not the condition of the Hindus at the date of the composition of the greater portion of the Vedas, as formerly inferred, is corroborated by the various scattered and incidental notices which are dispersed through this Ashtaka also: the question of the institution of caste is still left undecided, although the five classes of beings who are frequently mentioned, is invariably explained by the commentators to denote the four castes, and the barbarians as the fifth. We have also something very like a specification of Brahmans, as those acquainted with the forms of speech or as the (p. 142) appropriate repeaters of hymns. The expressions, however, do not indicate any exclusive privilege. The term Kshatriya does not occur in this book, and there are indications of Rájás hostile to the ritual who would not, therefore, have belonged to the recognized military order. No such word as Súdra is used, although, as in the first book, the Aryas and Dasyus are contrasted. It looks, also, as if it was intended to designate the latter as especially black-complexioned (pp. 35, 258). They were not, however, so barbarous but that they were assembled in towns or cities, of which, as well as of