section 2. THE FOUR VEDAS.--The hymns of the Rig-veda, composed by various authors some three thousand years ago, are almost the only monument of the first period of Indian thought; for the collections known as the Yajur-veda and

[paragraph continues] Sama-veda are for the most part merely adaptations of the Rig-veda for special liturgical purposes, while the Atharva-veda, which was not admitted until much later into the Vedic canon, combines Rig-vedic hymns selected for ritual objects with a mass of various incantations of little or no philosophic and literary merit. The study of these hymn-collections in their liturgical application by the Brahman schools bore as fruit the bulky volumes known generically as Brahmanas.