There are now two sets of 'Seven Rivers,' and the holiness of the western group is perceptibly lessened.

Here for the first time are found the _Vr[=a]tya_-hymns, intended to initiate into the Brahmanic order Aryans who have not conformed to it, and speak a dialectic language.[6] From the point of view of language and geography, no less than from that of the social and spiritual conditions, it is evident that quite a period has elapsed since the body of the Rig Veda was composed.

The revealed texts are now ancient storehouses of wisdom.
Religion has apparently become a form; in some regards it is a farce.
"There are two kinds of gods; for the gods are gods, and priests that are learned in the Veda and teach it are human gods." This sentence, from one of the most important Hindu prose works,[7] is the key to the religion of the period which it represents; and it is fitly followed by the further statement, that like sacrifice to the gods are the fees paid to the human gods the priests.[8] Yet with this dictum, so important for the understanding of the religion of the age, must be joined another, if one would do that age full justice: 'The sacrifice is like a ship sailing heavenward; if there be a sinful priest in it, that one priest would make it sink' (_Cat.Br_.IV.2.5.

10).

For although the time is one in which ritualism had, indeed, become more important than religion, and the priest more important than the gods, yet is there no lack of reverential feeling, nor is morality regarded as unimportant.