for the performance and teaching of Vedic sacrifices and rituals.
Most of the Sanskrit literatures that flourished after the Vedas
base upon them their own validity, and appeal to them as authority.
Systems of Hindu philosophy not only own their allegiance to the Vedas,
but the adherents of each one of them would often quarrel with others
and maintain its superiority by trying to prove that it and it alone
was the faithful follower of the Vedas and represented correctly their
views. The laws which regulate the social, legal, domestic and religious
customs and rites of the Hindus even to the present day are said to be
but mere systematized memories of old Vedic teachings, and are held to
be obligatory on their authority. Even under British administration, in
the inheritance of property, adoption, and in such other legal
transactions, Hindu Law is followed, and this claims to draw its authority
from the Vedas. To enter into details is unnecessary. But suffice it to
say that the Vedas, far from being regarded as a dead literature of the
past, are still looked upon as the origin and source of almost all
literatures except purely secular poetry and drama. Thus in short we may
say that in spite of the many changes that time has wrought, the orthodox
Hindu life may still be regarded in the main as an adumbration of the
Vedic life, which had never ceased to shed its light all through the past.


Classification of the Vedic literature.

A beginner who is introduced for the first time to the study
of later Sanskrit literature is likely to appear somewhat confused
when he meets with authoritative texts of diverse purport and
subjects having the same generic name "Veda" or "S'ruti" (from
_s'ru_ to hear); for Veda in its wider sense is not the name of any