A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c8.11

c8.11

It is clear that this distinction has ever been the stronghold of the hierarchical pretensions of the Brahmans. We can understand how a nation might be led to ascribe a superhuman origin to their ancient national poetry, particularly if that poetry consisted chiefly of prayers and hymns addressed to their gods. But it is different with the prose compositions of the Brâhmaṇas. The reason why the Brâhmaṇas, which are evidently so much more modern than the Mantras, were allowed to participate in the name of Śruti, could only have been because it was from these theological compositions, and not from the simple old poetry of the hymns, that a supposed divine authority could be derived for the greater number of the ambitious claims of the Brahmans. But, although we need not ascribe any weight to the arguments by which the Brahmans endeavoured to establish the contemporaneous origin of the Mantras and Brâhmaṇas, there seems to be no reason why we should reject as equally worthless the general opinion with regard to the more ancient date of both the Brâhmaṇas and Mantras, if contrasted with the Sûtras and the profane literature of India. It may easily happen, where there is a canon of sacred books, that later compositions become incorporated together with more ancient works, as was the case with the Brâhmaṇas. But we can hardly imagine that old and genuine parts should ever have been excluded from a body of sacred writings, and a more modern date ascribed to them, unless it be in the interest of a party to deny the authority of certain doctrines contained in these rejected documents. There is nothing in the later literature of the Sûtras to warrant a supposition of this kind. We can find no reason why the Sûtras should not have been ranked as Śruti, except the lateness of their date, if compared with the Brâhmaṇas, and still more with the Mantras. Whether the Brahmans themselves were aware that ages must have elapsed between the period during which most of the poems of their Rishis were composed, and the times which gave rise to the Brâhmaṇas, is a question which we need hardly hesitate to answer in the affirmative. But the recklessness with which Indian theologians claim for these Brâhmaṇas the same title and the same age as for the Mantras, shows that the reasons must have been peculiarly strong which deterred them from claiming the same divine authority for the Sûtras.