In respect of the method of reading into the Rig Veda what is found in parallel passages in the Atharva Veda and Br[=a]hmanas, a practice much favored by Ludwig and others, the results of its application have been singularly futile in passages of importance. Often a varied reading will make clearer a doubtful verse, but it by no means follows that the better reading is the truer. There always remains the lurking suspicion that the reason the variant is more intelligible is that its inventor did not understand the original. As to real elucidation of other sort by the later texts, in the minutiae of the outer world, in details of priestcraft, one may trust early tradition tentatively, just as one does late commentators, but in respect of ideas tradition is as apt to mislead as to lead well. The cleft between the theology of the Rig Veda and that of the Br[=a]hmanas, even from the point of view of the mass of hymns that comprise the former, is too great to allow us with any content to explain the conceptions of the one by those of the other. A tradition always is useful when nothing else offers itself, but traditional beliefs are so apt to take the color of new eras that they should be employed only in the last emergency, and then with the understanding that they are of very hypothetical value. In conclusion a practical question remains to be answered. In the few cases where the physical basis of a Rig Vedic deity is matter of doubt, it is advisable to present such a deity in the form in which he stands in the text or to endeavor historically to elucidate the figure by searching for his physical prototype? We have chosen the former alternative, partly because we think the latter method unsuitable to a handbook, since it involves many critical discussions of theories of doubtful value. But this is not the chief reason. Granted that the object of study is simply to know the Rig Veda, rightly to grasp the views held by the poets, and so to place oneself upon their plane of thought, it becomes obvious that the farther the student gets from their point of view the less he understands them. Nay, more, every bit of information, real as well as fancied, which in regard to the poets' own divinities furnishes one with more than the poets themselves knew or imagined, is prejudicial to a true knowledge of Vedic beliefs. Here if anywhere is applicable that test of desirable knowledge formulated as _das Erkennen des Erkannten_. To set oneself in the mental sphere of the Vedic seers, as far as possible to think their thoughts, to love, fear, and admire with them--this is the necessary beginning of intimacy, which precedes the appreciation that gives understanding. DIVISIONS OF THE SUBJECT.