There was no excuse for such ignorant assertions even thirty years ago, for in these very books, in the Laws of Manu, in the Mahâbhârata, and in the Purâ_n_as, the Veda is everywhere proclaimed as the highest authority in all matters of religion.[150] "A Brahman," says Manu, "unlearned in holy writ, is extinguished in an instant like dry grass on fire." "A twice-born man (that is, a Brâhma_n_a, a Kshatriya, and a Vai_s_ya) not having studied the Veda, soon falls, even when living, to the condition of a _S_ûdra, and his descendants after him." How far this license of ignorant assertion may be carried is shown by the same authorities who denied the importance of the Veda for a historical study of Indian thought, boldly charging those wily priests, the Brahmans, with having withheld their sacred literature from any but their own caste. Now, so far from withholding it, the Brahmans have always been striving, and often striving in vain, to make the study of their sacred literature obligatory on all castes except the _S_ûdras, and the passages just quoted from Manu show what penalties were threatened if children of the second and third castes, the Kshatriyas and Vai_s_yas, were not instructed in the sacred literature of the Brahmans. At present the Brahmans themselves have spoken, and the reception they have accorded to my edition of the Rig-Veda[151] and its native commentary, the zeal with which they have themselves taken up the study of Vedic literature, and the earnestness with which different sects are still discussing the proper use that should be made of their ancient religious writings, show abundantly that a Sanskrit scholar ignorant of, or, I should rather say, determined to ignore the Veda, would be not much better than a Hebrew scholar ignorant of the Old Testament. I shall now proceed to give you some characteristic specimens of the religion and poetry of the Rig-Veda. They can only be few, and as there is nothing like system or unity of plan in that collection of 1017 hymns, which we call the Sa_m_hitâ of the Rig-Veda, I cannot promise that they will give you a complete panoramic view of that intellectual world in which our Vedic ancestors passed their life on earth. I could not even answer the question, if you were to ask it whether the religion of the Veda was _polytheistic_ or _monotheistic_. Monotheistic, in the usual sense of that word, it is decidedly not, though there are hymns that assert the unity of the Divine as fearlessly as any passage of the Old Testament, or the New Testament, or the Koran. Thus one poet says (Rig-Veda I. 164, 46): "That which is _one_, sages name it in various ways--they call it Agni, Yama, Mâtari_s_van." Another poet says: "The wise poets represent by their words Him who is one with beautiful wings, in many ways."[152]