Page 586 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION 367
themselves are naturally the best evidence on the point. But, as
shewn by Dr. Muir in the second chapter (pp. 218-86) of the
volume above mentioned, the utterances of the Vedic J;H~his on
this point are not unanimous. Thus side by side with passages in
which the Vedic bards have expressed their emotions, hopes or
fears, or prayed for worldly comforts and victory over their
enemies, condemning evil practices like gambling with dice
( X, 34 ), or have described events, which on their face seem to be
the events of the day; side by side with passages where the poet
says that he has made ( Kr£), generated (jan), or fabricated ( tak~h)
a new ( navyas£ or apurvya ) hymn, much in the same way as
carpenter fashions a chariot (I, 47, 2; 62, I3; II, 19, 8; IV, 16,
20; VIII, 95, 5; X, 23, 6; 39, 14; 54, 6; I60, 5; etc.); or with hymn,
in which we are plainly told that they are composed by so and so,
the son of so and so, (I, 60, 5; X, 63, 17; 67, I; etc.), there are
to be found in the ~ig-Veda itself an equally large number of
hymns where the ~i~his state in unmistakable terms that the
hymns sung by them were the results of inspiration from Indra,
Varupa, Soma, Aditi or some other deity; or that the Vedic
verses (richa!z) directly emanated from the Supreme Puru~ha,
or some other divine source; or that they were given by gods
( devatta ), or generated by them and only seen or perceived
(pashydt) by the poets in later times, (I, 37, 4; II, 23, 2; VII, 66,
II; VIIJ, 59, 6; X, 72, 1; 88, 8; 90, 9; etc.). We are also told that
Vach (speech) is nitya or eternal (VIII, 75, 6, also cf. X, I26); or
that the gods generated the divine Vach and also the hymns (VIII,
I 00, 11 ; I 0 I, 16; X, 88, 8). The evidence of the Vedic hymns does
not, therefore, enable us to decide the question one way or the
other; but if the composition of the hymns is once ascribed to
human effort, and once to divine inspiration or to the gods directly,
it is clear that at least some of these old ~i~his believed the hymns
to have been sung under inspiration or generated directly by
the goddess of speech or other deities. We may reconcile the
former of these views with the passages where the hymns are said
to be made by human effort, on the supposition that the poets
who sang the hymns believed themselves to be acting under divine
inspiration. But the explanation fails to account for the statement
that the ~ik, the Yajus, and the &lman, all emanated from the
Supreme Purusha or the gods; and we must, therefore, conclude
that the tradition about the eternity of the Vedas. or their divine