History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c90.134

v7.c90.134

The easiest way was to proclaim that Vyāsa, the author of the great Epic and of the distribution of Purānas into eighteen, was also responsible for the division or arrangement of the Veda. If all this glorification of Vyāsa occurred in the centuries immediately preceding and following Christ, how could the supposed arranger of the Veda be mentioned in the early Vedic Literature, which, most scholars agree, was closed some centuries before Buddha (i e before the 6th century B. C.)? No body claims that the arrangement into mandalas or astakas or kāndas is eternal. It is only the hymns or mantras that are claimed to be eternal. Even the *padapātha* of the Ṛgveda is declared to be non-eternal and is ascribed to Śākalya whom the Nirukta criticises in VI. 28. Viśvarūpa on Yāj III 242 expressly states that the *pada* and *krama* arrangements of the Veda are due to human authors.¹³⁹⁴ This theory explains all matters and has far better claims to be accepted than Pargiter's bold ascription of fraudulent suppression inferred from (a supposed) silence.