The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c5.3

c5.3

THE VEDA is the oldest of the books that we now possess, and it is generally admitted "that for a study of man, or if you like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance with it."* There is no other book which carries us so near the beginning of the Aryan civilization, if not the absolute beginning of all things, as maintained by the Hindu theologians; and the importance of ascertaining even approximately the age when the oldest of the Vedic Ṛiṣhis, like the classical Vālmīki, may have been inspired to unconsciously give utterance to a Vedic verse, cannot therefore be overrated. The birth of Gautama Buddha, the invasion of Alexander the Great, the inscriptions of Ashoka, the account of the Chinese travellers, and the overthrow of Buddhism and Jainism by Bhaṭṭa Kumārila and Shaṅkarāchārya, joined with several other less important events, have served to fix the chronology of the later periods of the Ancient Indian History. But the earlier periods of the same still defy all attempts to ascertain their chronology; and the earliest of them all, so important to the "true student of mankind," the period of the Rigveda, is still the subject of vague and uncertain speculations. Can we or can we not ascertain the age of the Vedas? This is a question which has baffled the ingenuity of many an ancient and a modern scholar, and though I have ventured to write on the subject I cannot claim to have finally solved this important problem in all its bearings. I only wish to place before the public the result of my researches in this direction and leave it to scholars to decide if it throws any additional light on the earliest periods of the Aryan civilization.