Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/432

 must be assigned to the second, or Mantra period. These comparatively modern compositions belong to a time which may have extended from about 1000 to about 800 After this we enter on the Brahmana period, in which the Rig-Veda-Sanhitâ not only existed, but had reached the stage of being misinterpreted, its original sense having been forgotten. During this period—which we may place from 800 to 600—the national thought took the form of prose, and the Brâhmanas were written. Here the age of actually-inspired literature terminates, and we arrive at the Sutra period, which may have lasted till 200 Works of high authority, but not in the strict sense revealed works, were produced during these four hundred years (A. S. L., passim). An equal, or greater antiquity is usually claimed by other Sanskritists for these several classes of sacred literature. Wilson would place Manu (who belongs to the Sûtra period) not lower than the fifth or sixth century; the Brâhmana literature in the seventh or eighth; and would allow at least four or five centuries before this for the composition and currency of the hymns, thus reaching the date of 1200 or 1300 before the Christian era (Wilson, vol. i. p. xlvii).

Haug, who believes that "a strict distinction between a Chhandas and Mantra period is hardly admissible," and that certain sacrificial formulas, considered by Max Müller to be more recent, are in fact some centuries older than the finished hymns ascribed by that scholar to the Chhandas age, carries back the composition of both Sanhitâ and Brâhmana to a much earlier date. "The bulk of the Brâhmanas" he assigns to 1400-1200; and "the bulk of the Sanhitâs" to 2000-1400; while "the oldest hymns and sacrificial formulas may be a few hundred years more ancient still," and thus "the very commencement of Vedic literature" might be between 2400 and 2000 (A. B., vol. i. pp. 47. 48). While Benfey, considering that the Prâtisâkhyas (a branch of the Sûtras) must have been composed from 800 to 600, observes that the text of the Sâma-Veda must extend beyond this epoch (S. V., p. xxix.

Of the several Sanhitâs, that of the Rig-Veda (whose name is derived from a word rich, praise) is usually considered the most ancient, though Benfey expresses the opinion that the text of the Sâma-Veda may possibly be borrowed from an older