English
We need not dispute nicely as to the date at which Scythians or Parthians curtailed the Greek influence in Bactria; nor does it concern us whether the pedigree of certain Jats and others about the Indus* is to be traced to such invaders, or whether they are indigenous. But we accept the date 78 of the Christian era as famous from the overthrow of certain Scythians by Saliv&hana. We are agreed that the Mahometan arms under the Ommiyade caliph Walid in A. d. 707 approached India. Sultan Mahmud in 1000, Zingis Khan in 1224, Timur-leng in 1398, Baber in 1526, Akbar in the same century, Aurungzeb towards the end of the next, the rise of the Sikhs about 1700, and Clive in 1757, are sufficiently known. We may now therefore construct a rude table with great land- marks of events, and afterwards fill in the literary epochs, so far as we are able to agree about them/' Here Blancombe took a piece of chalk and sketched out a picture of this sort, putting only a few figures at first, and then filling up the intervals with smaller ones. He began with the events, and only after the next stage in the discussion added the books ; though I have copied them all together. * Elphinfitone, Hist* Ind, Appendix, Vol. i. c5 O o OS Oil H 1 § 'I ^ i I ^ I, a, O 04 8 II I I 1 o ;3 8 I I > ■^ fej ^ I ^ CO _ i O !2 • CO h ^ I •ill I o 8 O Ix f IO O t D Q •o a fl O •* a. C to to to CO I o I 'S i H O EH i I 8 8 O o I . „ A •= a . & •§ a ■" 3 i I 00 i a '£ I : -3 I n M H QQ M W o 3 00 *-* i 8> 8 ■S t J. -='^^1 ■* ^ .i4'li1-l? •fi ►^ -g S 8 m •| I 6-|6 I si Ti OB O (M CD C ^ ° g 0* w ° •§ e a P -S . I 0 f 'j I tS ^ "a 1 g -I - HINDU LITEBATURE. 273 CHAPTER VIII. Hind& Literature classified and found wanting. " Die Indiache Literatur gillt allgemein fUr die alteeie, von der wir schriftliche Dokumente besitzeD, und das mil recht ; die Grilnde aber, die Man dafUr bisher geltend gemacht hat, sind nicht die richtigeD. * * * " Sind wir aus ausseren, geographiBchen, und inneren, religionsgesliichtlichen, Giiinden bereditigt flir die Indische Literatur ein hohea Alter anzunehmen, ao Rteht es auf der andem Seite schlimm genug, wenn man nach chronologiachen Daten fUr dieselbe sucht.** — ^Wsbeb, Akademische Vorlesungen. Berlin, 184a. " Where now," said Blancombe, turning to Vidy4ch4rya, when he had gone some way with his table, "shall I put in the Vishnu Purina?** " The eighteen Purinas,'* answered Vidyi- chdrya, "are traced to the 8uta (bard) Bomaharshana, who received them from Vy4sa. Their name means old, and they are parts of our most ancient revelation." " Then where shall I put the Vedas?" asked Blancombe. "They also," replied A'ch^rya, "were compiled by Vy&sa." "Do you say the same of the laws of Manu?*' " They were given by Brahmd to the first Manu (Swdyambhuvan), for the instruction of mankind ; so that they are of the most venerable antiquity." " But," asked Blan- combe, " does your account of the Puranas extend to such as the Vayuj Vishnu, Bhagavat, and Matsyaf "Certainly," replied the other, " for it includes the whole eighteen." " Then here is an enormous difficulty," resumed Blancombe, " for let us look in the first place at the Vishnu. It professes in the outset to be taught by Parisara to Maitreya ; but Maitreya is mentioned in the Mah4bhdrata as contemporary with Duryodhana, who is about the time of the Great War, therefore many centuries later than the primeval date you have been suggesting. This, how- ever, is not all ; for the four Pur&nas I have just mentioned give an account of Indian dynasties far down into the Christian era, as we have seen in the case of the Andhras. Your theory M. P. 18 274 ULTENESS OF THE PUKA'NAS. is, that such things are prophecies. Nor do I deny that the .. Allwise God might, if he had so thought good, have inspired 'Vydsa or Romaharshana* to utter such predictions. But this minute sketching of history beforehand is not so ordinary in the course of the Divine government, that we can assume it to have taken place, unless the books which pretend it are remarkably well attested before the events come to pass. Can you quote any such testimonies to the Purdnas, as they now stand?" " The name," answered the A'ch&rya, " is very ancient." " But we should want," resimied the other, " some i)recise verification of the identity of the books. Whereas, in fact, we have rather the contrary. For the celebrated grammarian, Amara Sinha, who was one of the nine gems in the court of Vicrama, defines a Pur^a as a book of five topics, and then he mentions topics, such as imperfectly correspond to what are found in the works now called Purtoasf. For they now consist of little beyond religious instruction, with some names of dynasties. How can we then assume them to have been written many centuries earlier than the dynasties which they mention ? We are rather compelled by historical criticism to bring down the date of their composition. Nor is it necessarily wrong for us to do so, even according to your own doctors. For your treatises, I think, contain rules for discriminating between the sruti and the smriti^ or between the earlier Scriptures and later traditions. It seems to be acknowledged in the Mlmdnsd, that ^ a mistake may be made, and the work of a human author may be erroneously received as part of a sacred book by those who are unacquainted with its true origin}.' As to the Sri Bh&gavat Purdna, the story goes that Vydsa gave it not to Bomaharshana, but to Suka, hia 8on. Does not this imply a di£ference of origin ? Some Hindti scholars have gone so &r as to ascribe its composition to Yopa- deva, who lived A.D. 1200 or 1300. This may seem to you * A yarious writing of the same name is Lomaharahana. t Colebrooke, VoL L, and Wilaon, Pref. F. P. X Colebrooke, VoL I. pp. 306, 307. GRADUAL GROWTH OF VEDAS. 275 a very modem date: but when I remember that the Brahmd PurdLna celebrates the temples of Orissa, which were not built until 1300 A. D., while both this and the others which mentioti comparatively modem dynasties have no appearance of being the most recent in the body of the Purtoas, I cannot help think- ing you should reconsider your whole theory. Judging partly from what I have read, and still more from what is told me by men who have made your sacred literature their life-study, it seems to bear clear signs of falling into periods, divisible by great epochs of time. Even the language of the Vedas is different altogether from that of the Pur&nas. There are letters, words, grammatical inflexions*, and idioms of speech in the one set of books, which are not in the other. Good scholars call the language of the Vedas prior to Sanscrit, rather than very Sanscrit. Still more evidently, the forms of faith, the objects of worship, and the range of ideas are different in the two. Nor is it only your sacred books, but Hindii literature in general, which carries marks on its face of having grown by steps, rather than sprang with unnatural impulse into life. Even the Vedas themselves have some variety. First, we have the Manircis, or hymns in honour of certain deities, who have been mentioned, destined pro- bably to be sung at sacrifices. Then there are the Brdhmanas^ i. e. (what we might call rubrics, or at least) ritualistic comments and directions. Probably the Upanishads, or episodical specu- lations, should be considered much later than the simpler hymns of the old nature-worship. Much later down will come a stage, (which must have been after a long interval) when all these things will require grammatical explanation ; and, accordingly, the grammatical systems, first of Yaska, and later of Panini, will be developed. Again, some of your own traditions, and even the laws of Manuf, speak of three Vedas, and the Atharvan is not universally ranked so high as the other three. Scholars * Wilson, Sanscrit Grammar and Lexicon ; Lassen, LA. B. n. pp. 734 — 86a ; Weber, Indiiche Studien, and Vorletun^en, (quoted above) ; M. Miiller, in Bunsen's LaUti Buearchet. t ManUf B. i. § 23. 18—2 276 ATHARVA-VEDA. who have compared it with the others critically*, notice that its style is more formally liturgical.