Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c47.s1.3

c47.s1.3

Whether it be indigenous to India, or whether it existed in an embryonic form amongst the Āryas before their great dispersal, is a question which has been the subject of wide and erudite discussion. Probably it is insoluble, most theories of primitive society being apt, according to Sir Henry Maine, to land the adventurer in a region of mud-banks and fog. This, remarks the author of the last Census report (1901, p. 546), "is more especially the case in India, where the palaeological *data* available "in Europe hardly exist at all, while the historical value of the literary "evidence is impaired by the uncertainty of its dates, by the sacerdotal "predilections of its authors, by their passion for wire-drawn distinctions "and symmetrical classifications, and by their manifest inability to draw "any clear line between fact and fancy, between things as they are and "things as they might be, or as a Brāhman would desire them to be".