Caste in India: The Facts and the System c5.33

c5.33

At this very moment we are witnessing a strange spectacle. After the dazzling effect of the first discoveries, experts inclined more and more to reduce the age of Indian literature in all its branches; this tendency is to-day energetically combated. Is it simply a swing of the pendulum? Is it a reaction of the traditionalist spirit? At what point in such wide oscillations will the pendulum stop, when the field of uncertainty has been further narrowed down? Everything turns upon a question of date, that is to say, whether we place the Vedic hymns 3500 or 1200 B.C., the composition of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 800 or 250 B.C., and whether we admit an interval of 500 or of 2,000 or 3,000 years between the appearance of the Ṛgveda and the Mahābhārata. Personally, I am disinclined to accept the remoter dates; but this is not the place for personal impressions.