The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c10.s14.10

c10.s14.10

In the application of the methodology Meyer like his predecessors wants us to make certain assumptions. And these are almost of the same character as those of his predecessors. They deserve therefore the same recognition as the former. But the fundamental question remains yet to be solved. Let us go back to the Vedic question. The material contained in the *Ṛik Saṁhitā* may have belonged to the same age and society as that in the *Yajur* and the *Atharva*. Then, again, the material of the *Brāhmaṇas* and that in the *Saṁhitā* are likely to have been coeval, sociologically considered. If we go into the problem from the standpoint of substance or social experience and ritualistic facts there are hardly any arguments on the strength of which the alleged oldest Gautama is older than the alleged youngest Nārada. As long as it is a fact that the *Chhāndogya-mantras* compiled by Guṇaviṣṇu in the twelfth century are ruling Hindu life in Bengal and parts of Bihar even today, in other words, the latest compilation of modern times is in point of social data identical with what is to be found in `the oldest *Ritualliteratur* such as forms the subject matter of Hillebrandt's study, any dogmatism about relative chronology is eminently out of place. That Gautama and Nārada may, therefore, have come out of the same anvil there is nothing to dispute logically. That the *Manu Samhitā*, as we have it, is an encyclopaedic hotchpotch like the *Śukranīti* is also apparent to every student of these treatises. One can, therefore, find arguments in favour of Meyer's attempt to reopen the question of the chronology of the *Dharmaśāstras*. We should, at any rate, attach some distinct value to Meyer's standpoint that one treatise does not necessarily imply a later period or stage of development simply because the data furnished by it happen to look like being relatively more developed. The difference between treatise and treatise may just be the one between author and author. One may be a specialist, the other a dilettante and so on (pp. 86-88).