The primitive myth does not include all that properly comes within the definition of myth. There must be included the myth formed to explain a rite or ceremony, which originating in most ancient times has been kept up at the instance of a particular religion or cult, but the meaning and intent of which has been forgotten amidst the progress of a later civilisation. Pausanias is the great storehouse of such myths as this, and Mr. Lang has, more than any other scholar, examined and explained the process which has gone on. There is also included in this secondary class of myth, the myths upon which are founded the great systems of mythology. The Hindu mythology, in spite of all that has been done to place it on the pedestal of primitive original thought, is definitely relegated to the secondary position by its best exponents. The Vedic religion is tribal in form, and in the pre-mythological stage.[205] In the Rámáyaná and Mahábhárata, on the contrary, "we trace unequivocal indications of a departure from the elemental worship of the Vedas, and the origin or elaboration of legends which form the great body of the mythological religion of the Hindus."[206] The pre-mythological and the mythological stages of Hindu religion, therefore, are both discoverable from the traditional literature which has descended from both ages, and this fact is important in the classification of the various phases of tradition. When once it is admitted that the beginnings of mythology are to be traced in one section of the people who are supposed to derive a common system of mythology from a common home, future research will hesitate to interpret, as Kuhn and Max Müller and their school have done, the traditions of Celts, Teutons, and Scandinavians as the detritus of ancient mythologies instead of the beginnings of what, under favourable conditions, might have grown into mythologies. Mythological tradition is essentially a secondary not a primary stage. This fact is overlooked by many authorities, and I have noted some of the unfortunate results. It is not overlooked by those who study the principles of their subject as well as the details. Thus, as Robertson-Smith has so well explained, "mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.... Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of true religion, nor was it supposed that by believing a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. What was obligatory or meritorious was the exact performance of certain sacred acts prescribed by religious tradition. This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths."[207] This is exactly the position, and all that I have advanced for the purpose of aiming at a classification of the various kinds of tradition is in accord with this view.