The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.17

c8.17

It seems, therefore, quite well to situate the composition of the Atharvaveda and of the Yajurveda towards 1400 or a little afterwards³ and that of the hymns of the Ṛgveda, being older, towards at least 1500. The rest of the Vedic literature which is more recent, is to be necessarily dated in the centuries which follow, in part before Buddhism and Jainism, which suppose its existence and almost entirely before the IVth century B. C., the probable epoch of the grammarian Pāṇini. This latter writes in a language which particularly corresponds to that of the ancient Gṛhyasūtras¹, which constitute one of the last strata of the Vedic literature. We may consider that the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads, the books which contain the biggest share of the cosmo-physiological speculations studied by us and are chronologically placed between the Saṃhitās and the Sūtras, belong chiefly to the period between 1000 and 500 B. C.