Excerpt from Fables and Proverbs: From the Sanskrit; Being the Hitopadesa The time during which the Vedas were produced extended over centuries, With periodic changes of style, and has been divided into four periods, the last of which, from 600 to 200 B C, was the period of Sutra literature. Sutra means a string, and stands for a literature of short sayings strung to gether, by teachers who studied brevity, and of whom it was said, in their own proverbial way, that an author rejoiceth in the economizmg of half a short vowel as much as in the birth of a son. There were drawn from the four Vedas four upa-vedas. One was on Medicine from the rig-veda one on Music from the sama-veda one on Arms and Implements of War, from the yajur-veda and one on sixty-four Mechanical Arts, from the atharva-veda. The upa-vedas are now lost. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.