|
cHAPTER TWO
The problem of the dates of Rig Veda
The
religion of the
Vedic period
can be called Vedism to distinguish it from the modern Hiduism
since they differ considerably Texts dating to the Vedic
period, composed in “Vedic Sanskrit”. It is closely related
to Avestan (the Language of Avesta the zoroastrian scripture) ,
the oldest preserved Iranian language The only book that can be
confidently placed in this period ( pre- Christian Period)
is, only the Rig Veda excluding Mandalal I and X. Other
Samhitas and Brahmanas and Upanishads came later in the post-
Christian period and are written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit came
into existence only during the second century AD. Rig
Veda itself came to be written down only by the 2nd
century BC. To the
rishis,
the hymns of the
Rigveda
and other Vedic hymns were divinely revealed, and they were
considered "hearers" (shruti
means "what is heard"), rather than "authors". Hence any
attempt on the part of the scientific community is thwarted by the
Hindu religious men.
Belief in self manifestation
of Vedas history.
Thus
http://www.encyclopediaofauthentichinduism.org/articles/58_age_of.htm
quotes the Bhagwatam which says,
“Brahma produced the eternal scriptures, Rigved, Yajurved,
Samved, Atharvaved and also the Puranas which are like the fifth
Ved.”
They then go on thus “He
produced them at the very beginning of the creation of the world
which was 155.52 trillion years ago. So, now we know that
the Vedas, the UpAnishads and the Puranas are all eternal Divine
knowledges which were given by God to Brahma and then Brahma
produced them 155.52 trillion years ago to the Sages of this
brahmand who then produced them for the people of this earth
planet.”
 
Is there anything which was not
in the mind of God? Then we cannot really date anything.
In that sense I am eternal. Was I not in the mind of of God
before the creation? When was the computers discovered?
Does God know computer language? In so doing the Hindu sages try
to avert the question because the answer is so devastating.
According to strict orthodox Hindu interpretation the Vedas are
("not human compositions”). Rig Veda is essentially hymns to
nature gods. Are we to assume that God himself wrote those?
So those praise for Agni and Vayu and Indra were all done by God?
Only some one who has never seen or read the Veda will believe
that. They evidently are human reaction to forces of nature.
It does not make sense to say that the Psalms of David were
written by Yhvh. Incidentally God also wrote this book
before the creation of the world. This is also apaurusheya.
Yet that is exactly what the import of Rigveda being apaurusheya.
They are the human reaction of the early Aryans to the forces of
nature as they understood it.
In Hinduism,
Apaurusheyatva is also argued as "being unauthored".
This implies that the Vedas are not authored by any agency, be it
human or divine. Apaurusheya shabda ("unauthored word") is
an extension of apaurusheya which refers to the Vedas.
Apaurusheyatva is a central concept in the Vedanta and Mimamsa
schools of Hindu philosophy. These schools accept the Vedas
as svatah pramana ("self-evident means of knowledge").
These schools accept that the Vedas were "heard" by the Rishis.
The Mimamsa school asserts that since the Vedas are composed of
words (shabda) and the words are composed of phonemes, the
phonemes being eternal, the Vedas are also eternal. To
this, if asked whether all words and sentences are eternal, the
Mimamsa philosophers reply that the rules behind combination of
phonemes are fixed and pre-determined for the Vedas, unlike other
words and sentences. The Vedanta school also accepts this line of
argument. The question is “Are they?”. Evidently it is
a way of throwing sand in they eye.
It is not only the illiterate masses, who believe in this but also
the most educated and the learned do. Such is the mentality that
has been purposefully created by the few elites of this land. It
does not only remain a harmless superstition on personal level but
is used by these clever people to obscure any inquiry, any kind of
intelligent interchange of ideas. It is understandable if a
devotee believes in this but for a student of history it is of no
use. Unfortunately, the scholars dealing with the subject have
taken refuge under this theory of self manifestation to explain
away the historical facts,
Scientists use several
methods to determine the period of Vedas. The first method
is based on the texts itself and their references to the events
and culture. There are several mention of astronomical
conjunctions. Assuming that they are not just conjectured
relations and the authors were really good in their astronomy
Indologists can say that the Vedas were written after that event.
Vedas portrays a life
culture and they also indicate a time frame when the writers were
nomads with little metallic implements. Their major vehicle
was indeed horses.
Another method is
linguistic. Here we have to consider not only the language
but also the script. Scientists studied the change that occur in
phonemes in a language. The writing of the Vedas is another
indication. Evidently Rig Veda was not written down earlier
than the third century BC. How long did it survive without
writing as an oral tradition?
The
Rigveda is by far the most
archaic of the Vedic texts preserved, and it retains many common
Indo-Iranian
elements, both in language and in content, that are not present in
any other Vedic texts. Its creation must have taken place
over several centuries, and apart from that of the youngest books
(Mandalas 1 and 10), would have been
complete—according to mainstream scholarship— not earlier than 1500
BCE.
There
are strong linguistic and cultural similarities between the
Rigveda and the early Iranian
Avesta,
deriving from the
Proto-Indo-Iranian times, often associated with the
early
Andronovo
culture of ca. 2000 BC, when the earliest horse-drawn
chariots have been found (at
Sintashta,
near the
Ural mountains).
Here is the safest possible assumption.
The Vedas
There are four Vedas, the Rig Veda, Sama
Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda. The Vedas are the primary
texts of Hinduism. They also had a vast influence on Buddhism,
Jainism, and Sikhism. The Rig Veda, the oldest of the four
Vedas, was composed about 1500 B.C., and codified about 600 B.C.
It is unknown when it was finally comitted to writing, but this
probably was at some point after 300 B.C.
“Based
on internal evidence (philological and linguistic), the Rigveda
was composed roughly between 1700–1100 BCE (the early Vedic
period) in the Punjab (Sapta Sindhu) region of the Indian
subcontinent.”
Notice that it is talking about supposed composition based on
internal references. Evidently if something is referred to
in the content to have happened, it must have happened before the
composition. How long after the event is not really possible
to say. It is supposed to be transmitted orally without any change
from 1700 to 200 BC over a period of 1500 years, orally, by
word of mouth! At the same time we have traditions which
says that most of the other parts of Vedas has disappeared.
Yet we are told that what survived survived without distortion or
error!! It certainly belies “self evident means of
knowledge.”
Yet it has been
written down. The reason?
http://www.gurjari.net/ico/Mystica/html/veda.htm
It is believed that the Vedas were orally revealed by Brahma to
certain sages, who heard them and passed them down in an oral
tradition. They were not written down; in fact this was
prohibited. The Mahabharata denounces it and Kumarila Bhatta
held that by reading the Vedas, their spiritual significance was
nullified. As a result of this, of the 100,000 verses that is
believed to have existed in the Dvapara Yuga, most were either
lost or altered by the beginning of the Kali Yuga.
So it
did undergo alteration and loss. If writing down was the
solution to avoid that why was it not done earlier? If Kumarila
Bhatta was right, did it nullify the spiritual significance of the
Vedas now? The reason for writing down has to be obtained
for reasons other than what the sages are ready to give. The
nomadic people whose oral tradition was this veda did not have any
knowledge of writing. Even today we have large number of
dialects which do not have any scripts.
http://www.sanskrit.nic.in/ABOUTSANSKRIT1.htm
Although twenty one recensions of Rigveda have been mentioned
yet only five are more popular – Shakala, Vashkala, Ashvalayana,
Sankhyayana and Mandukayana. Out of these five also, only
Shakala is available.
Strangley enough some zealots do quote the Rig Veda to show the
existence of writing. But all those that refer writing are
from Mandala I and X which were written in Sanskrit and dated in
the post-Chrsitian period. Here is an example for it.
http://www.crystalinks.com/indiawriting.html
gives the following arguments to show it was indeed written
down:
“It is
definitely older than the Ramayan (at least 5500 B.C) and some
internal evidence takes it as far as 23,000 B.C. There are a
number of references in the Rig Veda which allude to the art of
writing. That the seers 'inscribed, engraved' words (on some
material) itself points that they knew how to write.
“One more verse
(Rig Veda 1-164-39) states, " In the letters (akshara) of
the verses of the Veda...".
“There are a
number of compositional chandas (metres), lines in a metre and
specific number of words in a line available from the Rig Vedic
text.
“It will take a
tremendous amount of mental effort to compose and to commit to
memory the vast amount of lines with all the intricacies
involved.
“Unless these
are reduced to writing and given a specific concrete shape, it
would not facilitate oral transmission.
“Yet another
verse (RgV 10-62-7) mentions cows being "marked" by an
"8-eight" which again shows that the ancients possessed the art
of writing.
“Also, RgVed
10-71-4 refers to a language which can be "seen"; that is a
script.
“If there
was no script, preferably the verb "to pronounce" rather than
"to inscribe/write" would have been utilized.
“However, such
a distinction has been made obviously because a written form of
language existed during that time.
“How could a
text with a monumental 100,000 verses could be composed,
preserved and transmitted through memory alone?”
http://thenagain.info/webchron/India/RigVeda.html
“These Vedas
were passed on orally for many generations. When they were
written down, they were first written in Vedic, an early form of
Sanskrit. Then around 300 B.C. the Vedas were written down in
the form we have them today.”
http://www.sanskrit.nic.in/ABOUTSANSKRIT1.htm
‘Vedas’
are the most ancient literary compositions in the world
literature. They are the treasure-house of Indian
civilization, culture and philosophy.”
http://www.4to40.com/discoverindia/index.asp?article=discoverindia_allaboutbooks2
Many scholars
believe that they were written about 2500 B.C. But there
are others like H. Jacobi of Bonn and Lakamanya Tilak who
believe that they were written about 6000 years ago. Tilak's
conclusion is based on a study of the position of the planets as
described in the Vedas. But another scholar, Madame Blavatsky,
says that the planetary positions described in the Vedas were
not written 60,000 years ago? She personally was of the opinion
that they were written in an extremely remote past.
Yet
http://www.newcenteryoga.com/
states:
The first
recorded written mention of Yoga appears in a collection of
Indian scriptures called the
Vedas , which
date back to about 1500 BC.
http://brahminworld.com/bw2.htm
The earliest reference to Brahmins, a derivative of the word
Brahmana, in the classical language of Sanskrit, occurs in the
Vedas written about 6000 B.C
Most people do
not know that Rig Veda was first written down only by the 3rd
century BC. Those who know do not want to remove the golden
cover.
Here was a challenge by one Silverbackman on the
date of Vedas in the hindunet. The weak attempts to reply
was obviously taxing to our super mind to understand
|
http://www.hindunet.com/forum/ |
|
Silverbackman
|
|
seeker |
|
Reged: 06/05/05 |
|
Posts: 73 |
|
|
|
|
What about the Vedas written so late?
#57087 - 07/24/05 11:50 PM
|
|
|
|
The Vedas was supposedly braught by the
aryans and in the vedas says there was war between the
the aryans and the natives of India, explain that. That
is however not the main point of the thread.
The Vedas was written a lot later but if the vedas are
oral tradition how can that be? India is one of the
first countries to have a written language so how is it
that the Vedas was written many thousands of years after
it was passed on and such? That doesn't make sense. It
seems logical the reason why the Vedas was not written
down is because the aryans (who have no written system)
passed it down orally and finally when they finally
found that the dravidian's written language can be used
to write it down. That makes the most sense. Please
explain. |
|
|
|
|
An interesting reply – Really throught
provoking!! |
The wonder is how could, those aryan
rishis have transferred the vedas word of mouth,
generation to generation. It is almost a super-human
memory that they possesed. |
|
Most
Indologists
agree that an
oral tradition
existed long before they were written down by the second century
BC in a variation of Persian Avestan Language which
is called Vedic Sanskrit by Indian Hindus. The oldest
surviving manuscripts of Rig Veda however are dated in the 11th
century AD.
Here are some
such attempts to extrapolate back into remote antiquity
The dates
Frawley gives for Vedic civilization are:
Period 1.
6500-3100 BC, Pre-Harappan, early Rig Vedic
Period 2.
3100-1900 BC, Mature Harappan 3100-1900, period of the Four
Vedas
Period 3.
1900-1000 BC, Late Harappan, late Vedic and Brahmana period
Professor
Dinesh Agrawal of Penn State University reviewed the evidence
from a variety of sources and estimated the dates as follows:
• Rig Vedic Age
- 7000-4000 BC
• End of Rig
Vedic Age - 3750 BC
• End of
Ramayana-Mahabharat Period - 3000 BC
• Development
of Saraswati-Indus Civilization - 3000-2200 BC
• Decline of
Indus and Saraswati Civilization - 2200-1900 BC
• Period of
chaos and migration - 2000-1500 BC
• Period of
evolution of syncretic Hindu culture - 1400-250 BC
The Indus
Valley Civilization flourished, according to the most reliable
current scientific estimates, between 2,600 and 1,900 BC—but
there are cities, such as Mehrgarh, that date back to
6,500-7,000 BC. These dates are based on archeological fieldwork
using standard methods that are commonly recognized in the
scientific community today.
“The question of chronology
has usually been considered a difficult one. Many students of
Hinduism after proclaiming the impossibility of ascribing dates
to early Brahmanical works, then not only proceed to do so, but
give them very ancient ones with little or no justification.
This is true not only of Hindu traditionalists, but also of many
Western orientalists, who in the words of Nirud C. Chauduri
"have succumbed to Hindu chronological fantasies" [Hinduism
(1979), p.33]. It may be mentioned that the antiquity claimed
for the Hindu texts contrasts strongly with the lateness of all
extant epigraphcial, iconographical and archelogical evidence.”
http://www.uq.net.au/slsoc/bsq/hinduism.htm
HINDUISM IN BUDDHIST
PERSPECTIVE
V.A.Gunasekar
“ We are in danger of
moving in a vicious circle: of assigning ideas to an epoch
because they occur in a certain book, while at the same time we
fix the date of the book in virtue of the ideas which it
contains.”
HINDUISM AND BUDDHISM - AN
HISTORICAL SKETCH BY SIR CHARLES ELIOT 1921
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN
PAUL LTD
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C.4.
Thus the
general tendency of Linguists and Indologists is to date the Vedas
much more recently. Kanchi Kama Koti thus states that:
The Age of Vedas
http://www.kamakoti.org
Some of them say that it was done about 1,500 BC; other suggest
that it may have about 3,000 years. Tilak fixes the date as
6,000 BC But modern Orientalists are inclined to bring the date
nearer
“It
is difficult to date the various Samhitas and Brahmanas of the
Veda very precisely because of the following reasons –
·
First, they are
primarily liturgical, ritualistic and spiritual texts. Hence, any
information on the material aspects of the culture that they
belonged to, would be incidental.
·
Second, they were
composed and transmitted by very elitist classes of Brahmin
priests and therefore are not representative of the culture and
civilizations of the periods to which they belong. This makes it
difficult to correlate them with archaeological data.
·
Third, they appeared to
have been written and compiled predominantly in modern Indian
states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and therefore, any
corroborating information from other parts of India would be of
limited utility.
·
Fourth, the texts, as
available today, are quite heterogeneous and layered and it is
often difficult to separate the layers chronologically.
·
Fifth, we are still in
the dark about the precise chronological and cultural relationship
between the archaeologically dated Indus Valley Civilization (IVC)
and the culture pre-supposed by the Vedic texts.
·
Sixth, we do not know
precisely the extent of transformation (in terms of content and
language) that these texts underwent before they were finally
frozen into their present forms. Thus, while the present forms of
these texts might be dated on the basis of principles of
Historical Linguistics, we would still not know when the Ur-texts
were composed.
·
Seven, the extant Vedic
texts are a fraction of the original literature and it is known
that at least some of the lost texts showed different linguistic
features. Therefore, any conclusions drawn on the basis of
linguistic studies could only be provisional. “
http://www.dharmicscriptures.org/Vedic_SB_Intro.doc
“Age Of The
Veda - Aryan Migration Theory
The old Iranian language of
Avesta, is very close to Vedic language. Avesta, the old
scripture of Zoroastrism (modern day Parsis) is very much like
the RigVeda. The Avesthan people and Vedic people called
themselves, Aryans (Iranian - airya). Infact,
Persian kings, proud of their Aryan origin, named their country
Iran, in the aftermath of the Aryan race theory.
The first systematic theory
of the relationships between human languages began when
Sir William Jones, the Chief Magistrate of Calcutta and
the founder of the Asiatic Society, proposed in 1786 that Greek
and Latin, the classical languages of Europe, and Sanskrit, the
classical language of India, had all descended from a common
source (The
Third Anniversary Discourse On The Hindus,1786 ).
The evidence for this came from both the structure of the
languages - Sanskrit grammar has similarities to Greek - and the
vocabulary of the languages. Thus, father in English
compares to Vater in German, pater in Latin,
patêr in Greek, pitr. in Sanskrit, pedar
in Persian, etc. On the other hand, father in Arabic is
ab, which hardly seems like any of the others. This
became the theory of Indo-European languages,
and today the hypothetical language that would be the common
source for all Indo-European languages (Language Family Tree -
Indo-European) is now called Proto-Indo-European.
First it was thought that
India was the possible origin of all civilization (Enlightenment
scholars like Voltaire). The famous German philosopher Kant
placed the origin of mankind in Tibet. Eighteenth century German
scholar, Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), supposed that a new
people had formed itself in northern India, swarmed towards the
West, populating Europe. Later it was postulated that the
original home of Indo-Europeans was Central Asia, (because of
common word roots for winter and snow, but not for rice or
ocean, also presence of horse - so the original home must hav
been a cold place away from the oceans) and various groups of
people migrated south to occupy India and Iran, West to occupy
Europe. French writer Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) proposed
that Eurpean aristocracy was Aryan, peasants were not Aryan and
Anti-Semitic ideas against the Jews was born.
German scholar Max
Muller (1823-1900), who picked up this prevelent
theory, explained that Indo Aryans came to India from north west
and conquered the Dravidian people who lived there, pushing them
to the south, sometime around 1500 to 1000 B.C. He thought the
high castes were Aryan people, while the lower castes non-Aryan
(just like it was argued in Erupoe). After the excavations and
discovery of Indus valley civilization (Harappa, Mohanjodaro -
1920 AD), Sir Mortimer Wheeler a British archeologist, in 1946
theorized that Aryans invaded the cities of Indus Valley
bringing that non-aryan civilization to an end. Aryan
Invasion Theory (AIT) became the accepted theory.
In recent times there is
little support for the theory of an invading army of Aryans
coming down from
Eurasia and destroying the cities of settlers on the Indus
valley or elsewhere. There is no archaeological evidence for
destruction of IVC civilization by invading armies in Indus
Valley civilization sites or elsewhere. AIT has been replaced by
a migration theory, which talks about movement of people from
Steppe of Central Asia to Europe and south and east Asia,
spreading Indo-European languages (The Spread of Indo-European
and Turkish Peoples off the Steppe). Indian civilization is
thought to be the product of these migrating people and those
who already existed here ( Romila Thapar - The Aryan Question
Revisited, http://members.tripod.com/ascjnu/aryan.html). Now it
is thought that Indus Valley Civilization was abandoned because
of shift in river courses rather than because of an invading
army of Aryans. Tributeries of Saraswathi diverted to join
Jamuna around 1700 BC, leading to drying up of Saraswathi,
probably causing the abandonment of settlements and eventual
decline of IVC.
Some writers, aligned with
the ideology of Hindutva, dismiss Aryan Invasion Theory as
colonial propaganda. The writers include Shrikant G. Talageri
(The RigVeda - A Historical Analysis , http://www.bharatvani.org/books/rig/),
David Frawley ( The myth of Aryan Invation Of India), Dr. Dinesh
Agrawal (Demise of Aryan Racial/Invasion Theory, http://www.hindunet.org/srh_home/1995_11/msg00056.html),
Dr Subhash Kak ( The Aryans and Ancient Indian History, http://www.indiastar.com/kakaryans.html
), N.S. Rajaram (Aryan Invasion), Dr. S. Kalyanaraman (
Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization, http://link.lanic.utexas.edu/asnic/subject/saraswatisindhucivization.html),
Koenraad Elst ( The Vedic Harappans in writing) and Dr. S.R. Rao
(The Lost City of Dvaraka,
https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no14243.htm).
They have proposed that Aryans are original to India and spread
through out Asia and Europe. We can call this the Out Of
India
theory (OIT).
Max Muller's scholarship and
integrity have been questioned (Max Muller - A Missionary Bigot,
http://www.hindunet.org/srh_home/1997_2/0088.html) , and he has
been daemonized, by the backers of OIT. OIT proponents argue
that Muller and other 19th century Eurpoean scholars believed in
divine origin of life as given in the Bible. Archbishop of
Ireland had decreed in 1664 that creation took place at 9 a.m.
on 23-10-4004 BC and one who will say anything else about it
will be considered a heretic. Since, life on earth only started
around 4000 B.C., according to their beliefs, they had to make
everything else fit into that time frame.
Also, several new sites along
rivers other than Indus have been excavated in Pakistan,
Rajastan and Gujarat in the last two decades. Many of the sites
are on the banks of a dried up river, which the OIT backers
assert is the river Sarasvti mentioned extensively in the
RigVeda. Thus, the Indus Valley Civilization has been renamed as
Sindhu - Sarasvati Valley Civilization by the backers of OIT (
Sarasvati Sindhu (Vedic / Indus) Civilization, Language and
Script, http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/ ieindex.htm).
They assign the Age of Vedas between 6000BC to 4000BC
(chronology of sarasvati river).
Many modern vedic scholars do
not agree with this OIT (Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from
Old Indian and Iranian Texts, http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/
EJVS-7-3.htm ). They point to lack of positive evidence and
political inclination of the proponents of OIT. Ofcourse, OIT
tremendously benefits the Hindutva proponents of the sangh
parivar. Some writers like Rajaram, went to the extent of
manufacturing evidence to support their theory ( Horseplay in
Harappa, http://www.flonnet.com/fl1720/ 17200040.htm). Infact
OIT proponents seem to be guilty of exactly the same thing they
accuse Muller and other scholars of - writing history to suit
their ideology.
·
Prof. Michael Witzel
(Age of the Veda) gives the date of RigVeda between 1700 BC and
1200 BC based on the following. RigVeda is a pre-iron age
(copper/bronze) age text of the Greater Panjab (incl. parts of
Afghanistan). SamaVeda, which is slightly later than RigVeda,
mentions iron. This sets a late date of c. 1200 for RigVeda, the
earliest iron in India.
·
The date of the demise
of the Indus civilization is c. 1900 BC. RigVeda is post Indus
Civilization.
·
Chariots of Indo Aryan
type first occur around 2000 BC west and east of the Ural
mountains
·
Horses
are indeed not found in South Asia before 1700 BC
|
