The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.97

v1.c17.97

In the absence of any trustworthy external evidence, we are forced to rely on what is after all the best criterion, the development of the civilisation and literature of the period. Max Müller¹ on the basis of this evidence divided the Vedic period into four, that of the Sūtra literature, 600–200 B.C., the Brāhmaṇas, 800–600 B.C., the Mantra period, including the later portions of the Rigveda, 1000–800 B.C., and the Chhandas, covering the older and more primitive Vedic hymns, 1200–1000 B.C. The exact demarcation did not claim, save as regards the latest period, any special exactitude, and was indeed somewhat arbitrary. But the fact remains that definitely later than the Rigveda we find the other Saṃhitās, of which an account is given below, and the prose Brāhmaṇa texts, which contain comments on and explanations of the Saṃhitās, whose existence they presuppose. It is impossible to deny that this mass of work must have taken time to produce, especially when we realise that what has survived is probably a small fraction as compared with what has been lost. Now in the Brāhmaṇas we find only the most rudimentary elements of the characteristic features of all Indian literature after Buddhism, the belief in metempsychosis, pessimism, and the search for deliverance. The distance between the Brāhmaṇa texts with their insistence on the ritual, and their matter-of-fact and indeed sordid view of the rewards of action in this world, and the later doctrine of the uselessness of all mundane effort, is bridged by the Āraṇyakas and the Upanishads which recognise transmigration, if not pessimism, which definitely strive to examine the real meaning of being, and are no longer content with the explanation of sacrifices and idle legends. It is unreasonable to deny that these texts must antedate the rise of Buddhism, which, in part at least, is a legitimate development of the doctrines of the Upanishads. Now the death of Buddha falls in all probability somewhere within the second decade of the fifth century before Christ²: the older Upanishads can therefore be dated as on the whole not later than 550 B.C. From that basis we must reckon backwards, taking such periods as seem reasonable; and, in the absence of any means of estimating these periods, we cannot have more than a conjectural chronology. But it is not likely that the Brāhmaṇa period began later than 800 B.C., and the oldest hymns of the Rigveda, such as those to Ushas, may have been composed as early as 1200 B.C. To carry the date further back is impossible on the evidence at present available, and a lower date would be necessary if we are to accept the view that the Avesta is really a product of the sixth century B.C., as has been argued on grounds of some though not decisive weight; for the coincidence in language between the Avesta and the Rigveda is so striking as to indicate that the two languages cannot have been long separated before they arrived at their present condition.