All this is easily intelligible. There followed a period, however, during which the true understanding of the hymns became considerably obscured, and a new series of works, the so-called Brâhma_n_as, arose. These were very different from the hymns. They are composed in a younger language and in prose. They treat of the sacrifice, so full of significance in India, at which the hymns were employed, and which seems to me to have been originally designed for measuring time, and thus served to mark the progress of civilisation. They explain the meaning of the hymns, often quite erroneously; but they contain some interesting information upon the condition of India, long after the period when the hymns first appeared, and yet before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century before Christ. It has been supposed that, as the Brâhma_n_as were composed in prose, they were originally written, according to the hypothesis of Wolf, that prose everywhere presupposes the knowledge of writing. I cannot admit this in the case of India; at any rate, there is no trace of any acquaintance with writing in the whole of this extensive mass of literature. It was throughout a mnemonic literature, and just because the art of writing was unknown, the memory was cultivated in a manner of which we have no idea. At all events, the Brahmans themselves knew nothing of the Brâhma_n_as in written form, and included them with the hymns under the names Veda and _S_ruti; that is, they regarded them, in our phraseology, as revealed, and not the work of men. The remarkable thing, however, is that they did not assume, like the Romans in the case of Numa and Egeria, a communication from the Vedic gods of nature to ordinary men, but contented themselves with declaring that the Veda had been seen by the Rishis, whose name Rishi they explained etymologically as “seer.” It is clear, therefore, that what the Brahmans understood under _S_ruti was nothing more than literature composed in an ancient language (for the Brâhma_n_as are also composed in an ancient language, though not as ancient as that of the hymns), and treating of matters on which apparently man alone can establish no authority. For how could ordinary man take on himself to speak about the gods or to give directions for the sacrifice, to make promises for the reward of pious works, or even to decide what is morally right or wrong? More than human authority was necessary for this, and so the Brâhma_n_as, as well as the hymns, were declared to be _apaurusheya_, that is, not human, though by no means divine, in the sense of having been imparted by one of the Devas.