Page 14 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE ORION
1_,
OR

Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas
Cl Cl
CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Importance of ascertaining the age of the Vedas-Liaguistic
method-Its defects-Astronomical method-Its difficulties unduly
magnified-Views of European and Native scholars examined.
THE VEDA is the oldest of the books that we now possess,
and it is generally admitted " that for a study of man, or if you
like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world
equal in importance with it." • There is no other book which
carries us so near the beginning of the Aryan civilization, if not
the absolute beginning of all things, as maintained by the Hindu
theologians; and the importance of ascertaining even approxi-
mately the age when the oldest of the Vedic ~i,his, like the
classical V~ki, may have been inspired to unconsciously give
utterance to a Vedic verse, cannot therefore be overrated. The
birth of Qautama Buddha, the invasion of Alexander the Great,
the inscriptions of Ashoka, the account of the Chinese travellers,
and the overthrow of Buddhism and Jainism by BhaUa Kum&rila
and Shankar&t::h&rya, joined with severill other less important
events, have served to fix the · chronology of the later periods of
the ancient Indian History. But the earlier periods of the same
still defy all attempts to ascertain their chronology, and the
earlies~ of them all, so important to the " true student of mankind,''
the period of the ~igveda, is still the --subject of vague and
uncertain speculations. Can we or can we not ascertain the age of
the Vedas ? This is a question which has baftled the ingenuity
of·many an ancient and a modem scholar, and though I have

•India: what it can teach us? p. 112. The references throughou
are to the"first edition of this work.
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