Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/26

 CHAPTER II THE VEDAS, BRAHMAAS AND THEIR PHILOSOPHY The Vedas and their antiquity. THE sacred books of India, the Vedas, are generally believed to be the earliest literary record of the Indo-European race. It is indeed difficult to say when the earliest portions of these com- positions came into existence. Many shrewd guesses have been offered, but none of them can be proved to be incontestably true. Max Miiller supposed the date to be 1200 B.c., Haug 2400 B.C. and Bal Gailgadhar Tilak 4000 B.C. The ancient Hindus seldom kept any historical record of their literary, religious or political achievements. The Vedas were handed down from mouth to mouth from a period of unknown antiquity; and the Hindus generally believed that they were never composed by men. I twas therefore generally supposed that either they were taught by God to the sages, or that they were of themselves revealed to the sages who were the "seers" (11lantradr!ii) of the hymns. Thus we find that when some time had elapsed after the composition of the Vedas, people had come to look upon them not only as very old, but so old that they had, theoretically at least, no beginning in time, though they were believed to have been revealed at some unknown remote period at the beginning of each creation. The place of the Vedas in the Hindu mind. When the Vedas were composed, there was probably no system of writing prevalent in I ndia. But such was the scrupulous zeal of the Brahmins, who got the whole Vedic literature by heart by hearing it from their preceptors, that it has been trans- mitted most faithfully to us through the course of the last 3000 years or more with little or no interpolations at all. The religious history of India had suffered considerable changes in the latter periods, since the time of the Vedic civilization, but such was the reverence paid to the Vedas that they had ever remained as the highest religious authority for all sections of the Hindus at all times. Even at this day all the obligatory duties of the Hindus at birth, marriage, death, etc., are performed according to the old