and his sons or kinsmen; of the fifth, to Atri and his sons; of the seventh, to Vasishtha and his descendants. The ceremonies (offerings of clarified butter and the fermented juice of the Soma plant) of which these ancient hymns formed the verbal portion, seem to have taken place in the dwelling of the worshipper in a chamber set apart for the purpose; and the absence of allusion to temples or other public places of worship in the hymns apparently implies their family or clan character. We may, therefore, agree with Professor Wilson that the hymns of the Rik "were probably composed in many instances by the heads of families, or of schools following a similar form of worship, and adoring in preference particular deities."[1] And if it is probable that different Indian families "had their own heroes, perhaps their own deities, and kept up the memory of them by their own poetic traditions,"[2] if parts of the Veda are represented as actually belonging to such illustrious families, is it not still more probable that in China, the ancient seat of ancestor worship, the old hymns to the dead (some of which have come down to us in the Shih King) were regarded as the common property of the family or clan?
§ 32. In the Roman song of the Arval Brothers we have a specimen of the sacred guild-chant more closely allied to the solemn psalm of the Hebrew musician-castes, or the earnest appeals to Indra and other deities in the Vedic hymns, than to the artistic spirit of the Delian Hymn. In Rome, as among the Hebrews and the Indian Aryans, clan life long retained an intense vitality; and when it is remembered how the archaic family-system of the Romans, itself descended from the clan, formed the
- ↑ Preface to translation of First Ashtaka, or Book, of Rig-Veda, p. xvii.
- ↑ Max Müller, Hist. Anc. Sans. Lit., p. 55.
