History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c90.175

v7.c90.175

So much space had to be devoted to an examination of Prof. Hazra's work on the Upapurānas for cogent reasons. His is the latest and most elaborate treatment of Purānas and particularly of Upapurānas, on which he has bestowed immense labour. His opinions, particularly about the dates of the Upapurānas, are likely to be taken as the last word on the subject and even his unfounded surmises are likely to be taken as well-established conclusions. Modern Sanskrit scholars have sad experience about such matters. Max Muller, working back from the date of Buddha and assigning arbitrarily two hundred years each for three periods viz. the Upanisad period, the Brāhmana period and the Samhitā period, inferred that the composition of the Vedas was to be assigned to a period about 1200 B C. He no doubt said that his periods were the minimum and that his was a pure surmise. Yet most writers who have not themselves made a deep study of the Veda assign the Vedas to about 1200 to 1400 B C. even after the lapse of about one hundred years from the time when Max Muller launched his surmises. For example, Prof. Toynbee in the table of the time spans of the growth phases of civilizations on p. 758 of volume IX (1954) gives the dates of Epiphany and of breakdown of the Indic civilization as 1375 B. C. and 725 B. C. . respectively. The present author does not at all agree with the dates assigned to the Upapurānas by Prof Hazra and with the methods and reasoning adopted for arriving at those dates. He had to perform this painful duty even in spite of his regard for Prof. Hazra.