A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s13.8

v1.c8.s13.8

Now it is clear that the supposition of 200 years for each of the different literary epochs in the origin of the Veda is purely arbitrary. Even Max Müller himself did not really wish to say more than that such an interval *at least* must be assumed, and that in 1000 B. C. *at the latest*, our Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā must already have been completed. He always considered his date of 1200-1000 B. C. only as a *terminus ad quem*, and in his Gifford Lectures on "Physical Religion" in 1889,¹ he expressly states "that we cannot hope to fix a *terminus a quo*. Whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000, or 1500, or 2000, or 3000 years B. C., no power on earth will ever determine." It is remarkable, however, how strong the power of suggestion is even in science. Max Müller's hypothetical and really purely arbitrary determination of the Vedic epochs in the course of years, received more and more the dignity and the character of a scientifically proved fact, without any new arguments or actual proofs having been added. It became a habit, a habit already censured by W. D. Whitney,² to say that Max Müller had proved 1200-1000 B. C. as the date of the Ṛgveda. It was only timidly that a few scholars like L. von Schroeder¹ ventured to go as far back as 1500 or even 2000 B. C. And when, all at once, H. Jacobi attempted to date Vedic literature back to the third millenary B. C. on the grounds of astronomical calculations, scholars raised a great outcry at such heretical procedure, and even to-day most of the Western scholars shake their heads wondering how Jacobi could venture to assert so exaggerated an opinion on the age of the Veda. Strange to say, it has been quite forgotten on what a precarious footing stood the "opinion prevailing hitherto," which was so zealously defended.