2. Notes on Indian Society and Life in the Age when the Hymns of the Rigveda were composed

Extract

The paper began by stating, that although the hymns of the Rigveda exhibit a simpler and less developed stage of religious belief and conception than we find in the works of the earliest Greek poets, and a system of ideas wildly diverse, both from the mythological forms and the theosophic opinions, of the later Indian pantheon, and of subsequent speculation; and although many of the customs and practices of that early age are different from those of later times, we are not to suppose that in the former period the condition of society was of a very primitive description.