Mueller, in his Ancient Sanskrit Literature, has divided Vedic literature into four periods, that of chandas, songs; mantras, texts; br[=a]hmanas; and s[=u]tras.  The mantras are in distinction from chandas, the later hymns to the earlier gods.[30] The latter distinction can, however, be established only on subjective grounds, and, though generally unimpeachable, is sometimes liable to reversion.  Thus, Mueller looks upon RV.  VIII. 30 as ’simple and primitive,’ while others see in this hymn a late mantra.  Between the Rig Veda and the Br[=a]hmanas, which are in prose, lies a period filled out in part by the present form of the Atharva Veda, which, as has been shown, is a Veda of the low cult that is almost ignored by the Rig Veda, while it contains at the same time much that is later than the Rig Veda, and consists of old and new together in a manner entirely conformable to the state of every other Hindu work of early times.  After this epoch there is found in the liturgical period, into which extend the later portions of the Rig Veda (noticeably parts of the first, fourth, eighth, and tenth books), a religion which, in spiritual tone, in metaphysical speculation, and even in the interpretation of some of the natural divinities, differs not more from the bulk of the Rig Veda than does the social status of the time from that of the earlier text.  Religion has become, in so far as the gods are concerned, a ritual.  But, except in the building up of a Father-god, theology is at bottom not much altered, and the eschatological conceptions remain about as they were, despite a preliminary sign of the doctrine of metempsychosis.  In the Atharva Veda, for the first time, hell is known by its later name (xii. 4. 36), and perhaps its tortures; but the idea of future punishment appears plainly first in the Brahmanic period.  Both the doctrine of re-birth and that of hell appear in the earliest S[=u]tras, and consequently the assumption that these dogmas come from Buddhism does not appear to be well founded; for it is to be presumed whatever religious belief is established in legal literature will have preceded that literature by a considerable period, certainly by a greater length of time than that which divides the first Brahmanic law from Buddhism.

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FOOTNOTES: 

     [Footnote 1:  Compare the accounts of Lafitau; of the native
     Iroquois, baptized as Morgan; and the works of Schoolcraft
     and Parkman.]

     [Footnote 2:  Jesuits in North America, Introduction, p.
     lxi.]

[Footnote 3:  “Like other Indians, the Hurons were desperate gamblers, staking their all,—­ornaments, clothing, canoes, pipes, weapons, and wives,” loc. cit. p. xxxvi.  Compare Palfrey, of Massachusetts Indians.  The same is true of all savages.]

     [Footnote 4:  Ib. p. lxvii.]