It is true that each of these traits may be found in certain parts of the Rig Veda, but it is not true that they represent there the spirit of the age, as they do in the Brahmanic period.

Of this Brahmanic stoa, to which we now turn, the Yajur Veda forms the fitting entrance.

Here the priest is as much lord as he is in the Br[=a]hmanas.

Here the sacrifice is only the act, the sacrificial forms (_yajus_), without the spirit.
In distinction from the verse-Veda (the Rik), the Yajur Veda contains the special formulae which the priest that attends to the erection of the altar has to speak, with explanatory remarks added thereto.

This of course stamps the collection as mechanical; but the wonder is that this collection, with the similar Br[=a]hmana scriptures that follow it, should be the only new literature which centuries have to show.[2] As explanatory of the sacrifice there is found, indeed, a good deal of legendary stuff, which sometimes has a literary character.