Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/37

The Veda
21
Vedic period itself, as I think altogether likely, the
early manuscripts were certain to perish in the furious
Indian climate. They must, in that case, have been
saved by diligent copying and recopying. The
majority of the manuscripts upon which are based
our editions of Vedic texts date from recent cen-
turies. Manuscripts that date back to the fourteenth
century of our era are rare; only a very few go back
to the twelfth.]
Here, however, enters one of the curiosities of
Hindu religious life. The adherents of a certain Veda
or Vedic school, no matter whether the text of that
school was reduced to writing or not, must, in theory,
know their texts by heart. These are the so-called
Grotriyas or "Oral Traditionalists." They live to
this day, being, as it were, living manuscripts of their
respective Vedas. The eminent Hindu scholar, the
late Shankar Pandurang Pandit, tells us in the pre-
face to his great Bombay edition of the Atharva-
Veda how he used three of these oral reciters of the
Atharva-Veda out of a total of only four that were
at that time still alive in the Dekkhan; and how
their oral authority proved to be quite as weighty
as the written authority of his manuscripts. These
living manuscripts were respectively, Messrs. Bāpuji
Jivanrām; Keçava Bhat bin Daji Bhat; and Ven-
kan Bhatji, the last "the most celebrated Atharva