The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c12.27

Language: English

c12.27.1

Again, the Rigveda Sanhitâ contains no reference to the Krittikâs as the mouth of the Nakshatras. I therefore conclude that the legends in question must have been incorporated into the hymns of the Rigveda, when they were still intelligible, that is, in the Orion period. It is of course impossible to determine the dates of individual hymns. That all of them were not sung at one time is quite evident from their style. Some of the hymns distinctly speak of older hymns or bards, while in Rig. x. 99.9 the hymns are said to proceed directly from the *purusha* or the sacrificial personage. All that we can therefore legitimately say is that the hymns, which contain older traditions and legends, *e. g.*, of the Ribhus and Vrishakapi, must have been composed in the Orion period. Some of the hymns may even be still older and some later, but generally speaking we may suppose that 4000 and 2500 B. C. are the limits of this period. This may require us to assume the existence of some Vedic verses at a time when the Hindus, the Greeks and the Parsis lived together. Some scholars may hesitate to accept such a conclusion. But so far as I know the conclusion is not inconsistent with the results of comparative Philology or Mythology. Prof. Max. Müller in his *Biographies of Words* (pp.

c12.27.2

188-198) gives a list of about sixty mythological names which may be shewn to be common to Greek and Sanskrit.[*] If so many mythological names can be shewn to be phonetically identical it is impossible to suppose that no songs, celebrating the deeds of these deities, existed in the Indo-Germanic period. Westphal has already proved the existence of poetry in the Indo-Germanic period, and Dr. Kuhn has endeavoured to trace whole formulæ back to the beginning of Indo-European poetry. Verbal coincidences such as, Sk. *pada*, Av. *padha*, Gk. *pous*, all meaning a metrical foot, again point to the same conclusion.[*] The results of comparative Philology, are therefore, not only not inconsistent with, but, on the contrary, corroborate the conclusions we have independently deduced from the astronomical references and allusions recorded in the old Vedic literature. But I would not make my case rest on such grounds. It must be remembered that we have not been speculating in any way about the oldest Vedic periods. Our conclusions have been based on express statements and texts in the Vedic literature and unless the texts themselves are questioned or other more reasonable interpretations suggested, we shall not be justified in disregarding these results, simply because they do not support certain literary hypotheses, guesses, or conjectures, as for instance, those that have been previously referred to in the first chapter. The results of the literary method may be moderate.

c12.27.3

But moderation is a virtue only when we have to make guesses about the periods of antiquity from uncertain data. Where however we have definite texts and traditions to rely upon, nothing but prejudice can deter us from drawing legitimate conclusions from them on the ground that they take us too far back. The astronomical method, I admit, is vague, in so far as it does not enable us to determine the exact date of *all* the Vedic hymns or works, but it is certainly superior to the linguistic method inasmuch as it supplies us with certain definite and undisputed facts, for instance, the position of the equinoxes which can safely be made the nuclei of the different periods of antiquity. When the centres of each period are thus indisputably fixed and determined, we can then use the literary or the linguistic method to supplement these results by determining the duration of each period. There would then be no real opposition between the two methods. The one would determine the specific points of time, while the other would give us the range of the different periods. In other words, the first would supply the piers and the second the arches of the bridge, which we mean to construct across the period of antiquity, and which must therefore be completed with the assistance of both.