Page 15 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

2 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ORION
ventured to write on the subject I cannot claim to have finally
solved this important probttm in all its bearings. I only wish to
place before the public the result of my researches in this direc-
tion and leave it to scholars to decide if it throws any additional
light on the earliest ~riods of the Aryan civilization.
... But before I proceed to state my views, it may be useful to
briefiy examine !he methods by which Oriental scholars have
hitherto attempted to solve the question as to the age and character
of the Vedas. Prof. Max Muller divides the Vedic literatur~· into
four periods-the Chhandas, Mantra, Brahma~a, and Stltra; and
as each period presupposes the preceding, while 'the last or the
Stltra period is prior, " if not to the origin, at least to the spre~ding
and political ascendancy of Buddhism " in the fourth century
before Christ, that learned scholar, by assigning two hundred years
for each period arrives at about 1200 B. C., as the latest date, at
which we may suppose the Vedic hymns to have been composed. •
This, for convenience, may be called the literary or the linguistic
method of ascertaining the age of the Vedas. A little considera-
tion will, however, at once disclose the weak points in such arbit-
rary calculations. There are different opinions as to the division
of the Vedic literature; some scholars holding that the Chhandas
and Mantra is one period, though a long one. But granting that
the Vedic literature admits of a four-fold division, the question
of the duration of each period is still involved in uncertainty
and considering the fact that each period might run into and
overlap the other to a certain extent, it becomes extremely difficult
to assign even the minimum chronological limits to the different
periods. The method may, indeed, be used with advantage to
show that the Vedas could not have been composed later than a
certain period; but it helps little in even approximately fixing the
correct age of the Vedas. ·Prof. Max Muller himself admitst that
the limit of 200 years can be assigned to each period only under
the supposition that during the early periods of history the growth

• See Max Muller's JSt Ed. of ~ig. Vol. IV, Pref. pp. v, ni. This
preface is also printed as a separate pamphlet under the title" Ancient
Hindu Astronomy and Chronology.'' In the second edition of the
l;ligveda the prefaces in th e first edition arc reprinted all together at
the beginning of the fourth Volume.
t Pref. tr. ~ig. \"ol. IY, p. Yii.