History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v3.c47.3

v3.c47.3

A deep study of Vedic sacrifices is quite essential for the proper understanding of the Vedic Literature, for arriving at approximately correct statements about the chronology, the development and the stratification of the different portions of that Literature and for the influence that that Literature exerted on the four varṇas and the caste-system, on the splitting up of the brāhmaṇas themselves among several sub-castes²²²² and on the institution of gotras and pravaras. Early European scholars generally paid scant attention to the deep study of the Vedic sacrifices and endeavoured to understand the meaning of the Vedas principally by reference to grammar, comparative philology and the comparison of several passages containing the same word or words. Max Müller put forward a tentative scheme of chronology based mostly on subjective considerations and prompted by the great prejudice felt by European scholars generally against admitting any great antiquity for the Vedas. Therefore the endeavour of most European scholars has been to show that the mantras could not have been composed before 1400 B. C. It is beyond the scope of this work to enter into any discussion about the dates of the various sections of the Vedic Literature. It must be here said, however, that I do not subscribe to the view that 1400 B. C. is the uppermost limit of the original composition of the Vedic hymns. The hymns may have been composed for aught we know several thousand years