Around the Scriptures of the greater religions devout reverence has gathered with ardent faith. The Hindu term Veda (meaning literally "knowledge") has a narrower and a wider sense. In its limited application it denotes the four collections of hymns, of ritual formulæ, and sacrificial songs, of which the Rig-Veda is the most important (p. 10). Their history must be inferred from their contents; of the circumstances of their formation there is no external evidence, save that the early Buddhist texts show that the fourth or Atharva-Veda had not acquired canonical value in the days of the Teacher Gotama. But the term Veda is also extended to include a mass of ceremonial compositions known as Brāhmanas, attached to one or other of the ancient collections, and handed down in different religious schools. These are all included more or less definitely in what a Western theologian might term "Revelation." They are technically designated as _çruti_ or "hearing"; they form the matter of the sacred teaching transmitted orally, which must be reserved for a special order and not imparted to the world outside. The books of household law, on the other hand, prescribing the domestic ceremonies for birth, marriage, and death, regulating caste-privileges, and laying down rules for {190} the conduct of life, were open to all. But just as the Rig-Veda was exalted into a reproduction on earth of what existed eternally in heaven, so endeavours were made to convert the legal works current in particular schools into sacred codes of divine origin. One was boldly ascribed to Vishnu, who communicated it to the goddess of the earth. Another, most famous of all, was attached to Manu, the eponymous hero of the human race. "Father Manu" he is called in the Rig-Veda, and as the sire of mankind he was the founder of social and moral order. First king, and Rishi (or seer) privileged to behold the sacred texts, he was the inventor of rites and author of the maxims of law. And yet higher dignity belonged to him, for he sprang from the Self-Existent and could thus be identified with Brahma himself; and as Prajāpati (p. 143) he took part in the creation of the world. In due course poetry and philosophy had their turn. The immense epic known as the Mahābhārata, where tradition and myth and imaginative speculation are blended in rich confusion, was put in the scales by the gods against the four Vedas, and its sanctity outweighed them all.