"Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.
"Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the Vasishthas magnify with songs, give us riches high and wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings!"
"This hymn, addressed to the Dawn, is a fair specimen of the original simple poetry of the Veda. It has no reference to any special sacrifice, it contains no technical expressions, it can hardly be called a hymn, in our sense of the word. It is simply a poem expressing, without any effort, without any display of far-fetched thought or brilliant imagery, the feelings of a man who has watched the approach of the Dawn with mingled delight and awe, and who was moved to give utterance to what he felt in measured language."44
"But there is a charm in these primitive strains discoverable in no other class of poetry. Every word retains something of its radical meaning, every epithet tells, every thought, in spite of the most intricate and abrupt expressions, is, if we once disentangle it, true, correct, and complete."45
The Vedic literature is divided by Müller into four periods, namely, those of the Chhandas, Mantra, Brâhmana, and Sûtras. The Chhandas period contains the oldest hymns of the oldest, or Rig-Veda. To that of the Mantras belong the later hymns of the same Veda. But the most modern of these are older than the Brâhmanas. The Brâhmanas contain theology; the older Mantras are liturgic. Müller says that the Brâhmanas, though so very ancient, are full of pedantry, shallow and insipid grandiloquence and priestly conceit. Next to these, in the order of time, are the Upanishads. These are philosophical, and almost the only part of the Vedas which are read at the present time. They are believed to contain the highest authority for the different philosophical systems, of which we shall speak hereafter. Their authors are unknown. More modern than these are the Sûtras. The word "Sûtra" means string, and they consist of a string of short sentences. Conciseness is the aim in this style, and every doctrine is reduced to a skeleton. The numerous Sûtras now extant contain the distilled essence of all the knowledge which the Brâhmans have collected during centuries of meditation. They belong to the non-revealed literature, as distinguished from the revealed literature—a distinction made by the Brâhmans before the time of Buddha. At the time of the Buddhist controversy the Sûtras were admitted to be of human origin and were consequently recent works. The distinction between the Sûtras and Brâhmanas is very marked, the second being revealed. The Brâhmanas were composed by and for Brahmans and are in three collections. The Vedângas are intermediate between the Vedic and non-Vedic literature. Pânini, the grammarian of India, was said to be contemporary with King Nanda, who was the successor of Chandragupta, the contemporary of Alexander, and therefore in the second half of the fourth century before Christ. Dates are so precarious in Indian literature, says Max Müller, that a confirmation within a century or two is not to be despised. Now the grammarian Kâtyâyana completed and corrected the grammar of Pânini, and Patanjeli wrote an immense commentary on the two which became so famous as to be imported by royal authority into Cashmere, in the first half of the first century of our era. Müller considers the limits of the Sûtra period to extend from 600 B.C. to 200 B.C. Buddhism before Asoka was but modified Brahmanism. The basis of Indian chronology is the date of Chandragupta. All dates before his time are merely hypothetical. Several classical writers speak of him as founding an empire on the Ganges soon after the invasion of Alexander. He was grandfather of Asoka. Indian traditions refer to this king.
Returning to the Brâhmana period, we notice that between the Sûtras and Bârahmanas come the Aranyakas, which are books written for the recluse. Of these the Upanishads, before mentioned, form part. They presuppose the existence of the Brâhmanas.
Rammohun Roy was surprised that Dr. Rosen should have thought it worth while to publish the hymns of the Veda, and considered the Upanishads the only Vedic books worth reading. They speak of the divine SELF, of the Eternal Word in the heavens from which the hymns came. The divine SELF they say is not to be grasped by tradition, reason, or revelation, but only by him whom he himself grasps. In the beginning was Self alone. Atman is the SELF in all our selves—the Divine Self concealed by his own qualities. This Self they sometimes call the Undeveloped and sometimes the Not-Being. There are ten of the old Upanishads, all of which have been published. Anquetil Du Perron translated fifty into Latin out of Persian.
The Brâhmanas are very numerous. Müller gives stories from them and legends. They relate to sacrifices, to the story of the deluge, and other legends. They substituted these legends for the simple poetry of the ancient Vedas. They must have extended over at least two hundred years, and contained long lists of teachers.
Müller supposes that writing was unknown when the Rig-Veda was composed. The thousand and ten hymns of the Vedas contain no mention of writing or books, any more than the Homeric poems. There is no allusion to writing during the whole of the Brâhmana period, nor even through the Sûtra period. This seems incredible to us, says Müller, only because our memory has been systematically debilitated by newspapers and the like during many generations. It was the business of every Brahman to learn by heart the Vedas during the twelve years of his student life. The Guru, or teacher, pronounces a group of words, and the pupils repeat after him. After writing was introduced, the Brahmans were strictly forbidden to read the Vedas, or to write them. Cæsar says the same of the Druids. Even Pânini never alludes to written words or letters. None of the ordinary modern words for book, paper, ink, or writing have been found in any ancient Sanskrit work. No such words as volumen, volume; liber, or inner bark of a tree; byblos, inner bark of papyrus; or book, that is beech wood. But Buddha had learnt to write, as we find by a book translated into Chinese A.D. 76. In this book Buddha instructs his teacher; as in the "Gospel of the Infancy" Jesus explains to his teacher the meaning of the Hebrew alphabet. So Buddha tells his teacher the names of sixty-four alphabets. The first authentic inscription in India is of Buddhist origin, belonging to the third century before Christ.
In the most ancient Vedic period the language had become complete. There is no growing language in the Vedas.
In regard to the age of these Vedic writings, we will quote the words of Max Müller, at the conclusion of his admirable work on the "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature," from which most of this section has been taken:—
"Oriental scholars are frequently suspected of a desire to make the literature of the Eastern nations appear more ancient than it is. As to myself, I can truly say that nothing would be to me a more welcome discovery, nothing would remove so many doubts and difficulties, as some suggestions as to the manner in which certain of the Vedic hymns could have been added to the original collection during the Brâhmana or Sûtra periods, or, if possible, by the writers of our MSS., of which most are not older than the fifteenth century. But these MSS., though so modern, are checked by the Anukramanis. Every hymn which stands in our MSS. is counted in the Index of Saunaka, who is anterior to the invasion of Alexander. The Sûtras, belonging to the same period as Saunaka, prove the previous existence of every chapter of the Brâhmanas; and I doubt whether there is a single hymn in the Sanhitâ of the Rig-Veda which could not be checked by some passage of the Brâhmanas and Sûtras. The chronological limits assigned to the Sûtra and Brâhmana periods will seem to most Sanskrit scholars too narrow rather than too wide, and if we assign but two hundred years to the Mantra period, from 800 to 1000 B.C., and an equal number to the Chhandas period, from 1000 to 1200 B.C., we can do so only under the supposition that during the early periods of history the growth of the human mind was more luxuriant than in later times, and that the layers of thought were formed less slowly in the primary than in the tertiary ages of the world."
The Vedic age, according to Müller, will then be as follows:—
| Sûtra period, | from B.C. 200 to B.C. 600. |
| Brâhmana period, | " " 600 " 800. |
| Mantra period, |
"
|