To say that the Rig Veda represents an age of childlike thought, a period before the priestly ritual began its spiritual blight, is incorrect.

But no less incorrect is it to assert that the Rig Veda represents a period when hymns are made only for rubrication by priests that sing only for baksheesh.

Scholars are too prone to-day to speak of the Rig Veda in the same way as the Greeks spoke of Homer.

It is to be hoped that the time may soon come when critics will no longer talk about the Collection as if it were all made in the same circumstances and at the same time; above all is it desirable that the literary quality of the hymns may receive due attention, and that there may be less of those universal asseverations which treat the productions of generations of poets as if they were the work of a single author.
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.