The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c12.27.3

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.