or meditation over the actual performance of the complicated ceremonials
of sacrifice. The growth of the subjective speculation, as being capable
of bringing the highest good, gradually resulted in the supersession of
Vedic ritualism and the establishment of the claims of philosophic
meditation and self-knowledge as the highest goal of life. Thus
we find that the Âra@nyaka age was a period during which free thinking
tried gradually to shake off the shackles of ritualism which had fettered
it for a long time. It was thus that the Âra@nyakas could pave the way
for the Upani@sads, revive the germs of philosophic speculation in the
Vedas, and develop them in a manner which made the Upani@sads the source
of all philosophy that arose in the world of Hindu thought.


The @Rg-Veda, its civilization.

The hymns of the @Rg-Veda are neither the productions of a
single hand nor do they probably belong to any single age. They
were composed probably at different periods by different sages,
and it is not improbable that some of them were composed

15

before the Aryan people entered the plains of India. They were handed
down from mouth to mouth and gradually swelled through the new additions
that were made by the poets of succeeding generations. It was when the
collection had increased to a very considerable extent that it was
probably arranged in the present form, or in some other previous forms
to which the present arrangement owes its origin. They therefore reflect
the civilization of the Aryan people at different periods of antiquity
before and after they had come to India. This unique monument of a long