The History of Indian Literature c8.8

c8.8

But although the songs of the Ṛik, or the majority of them, were composed on the banks of the Indus, their final compilation and arrangement can only have taken place in India proper; at what time, however, it is difficult to say. Some portions come down to an age so recent, that the system of caste had already been organised; and tradition itself, in ascribing to Śákalya and Pañchála Bábhravya a leading part in the arrangement of the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, points us to the flourishing epoch of the Videhas and Pañchálas, as I shall show hereafter. The Saṃhitá of the Sáman, being entirely borrowed from the Ṛik, gives no clue to the period of its origin; only, in the fact that it contains no extracts from any of the later portions of the Ṛik, we have perhaps an indication that these were not then in existence. This, however, is a point not yet investigated. As for the two Saṃhitás of the Yajus, we have in the prose portions peculiar to them, most distinct proofs that both originated in the eastern parts of Hindustán,⁷ in the country of the Kurupañchálas, and that they belong to a period when the Brahmanical element had already gained the supremacy, although it had still to encounter many a hard struggle, and when at all events the hierarchy of the Brahmans, and the system of caste, were completely organised. Nay, it may be that we have even external grounds for supposing that the present redaction of the Saṃhitá of the White Yajus dates from the third century B.C. For Megasthenes mentions a people called ΜΑδιανδινοί, and this name recurs in the Má- dhyamdinas, the principal school of the White Yajus. More of this later on.