Caste in India: The Facts and the System c5.6

c5.6

The Vedic hymns are composed in a language very much older than that of all the other books; the sacerdotal literature, ancient Brāhmaṇas and Upanishads, is in its grammar, vocabulary, and style intermediate between the idiom of the hymns and the language of epic poetry, which in its turn is differentiated by slight shades of archaism from the classic Sanskrit of the Śāstras and of the Purāṇas. So much is undisputed; and this literary chronology remains an indispensable basis for research. But does it warrant all the conclusions that have been deduced from it?