At such perversion of reasonable criticism is the exegesis of the Veda arrived in one direction. But in another it is gone astray no less, as misdirected by its clever German leader. In three volumes[21] Brunnhofer has endeavored to prove that far from being a Brahmanic product, the Rig Veda is not even the work of Hindus; that it was composed near the Caspian Sea long before the Aryans descended into India. Brunnhofer's books are a mine of ingenious conjectures, as suggestive in detail as on the whole they are unconvincing. His fundamental error is the fancy that names and ideas which might be Iranian or Turanian would prove, if such they really could be shown to be, that the work in which they are contained must be Iranian or Turanian. He relies in great measure on passages that always have been thought to be late, either whole late hymns or tags added to old hymns, and on the most daring changes in the text, changes which he makes in order to prove his hypothesis, although there is no necessity for making them. The truth that underlies Brunnhofer's extravagance is that there are foreign names in the Rig Veda, and this is all that he has proved thus far. In regard to the relation between the Veda and the Avesta the difference of views is too individual to have formed systems of interpretation on that basis alone. Every competent scholar recognizes a close affinity between the Iranian Yima and the Hindu Yama, between the _soma_-cult and the _haoma_-cult, but in how far the thoughts and forms that have clustered about one development are to be compared with those of the other there is no general agreement and there can be none. The usual practice, however, is to call the Iranian _Yima, haoma_, etc., to one's aid if they subserve one's own view of _Yama, soma,_ and other Hindu parallels, and to discard analogous features as an independent growth if they do not. This procedure is based as well on the conditions of the problem as on the conditions of human judgment, and must not be criticized too severely; for in fact the two religions here and there touch each other so nearly that to deny a relation between them is impossible, while in detail they diverge so widely that it is always questionable whether a coincidence of ritual or belief be accidental or imply historical connection.