Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/136

 Oriental Society. Mr. Tilak's Control of Vedic literature drew from another scholar Dr. Bloomfield of John Hopkin's University an admiration which could describe Mr. Tilak only as a Lion in learning and no less.

In dealing with the subject of the age of the Vedas in such detail Mr. Tilak's purpose cannot be considered to be one of merely satisfying his own antiquarian curiosity. Though India could claim according to traditions a civilisation of long Yugas covering periods of thousands of years before Christ, scholars of Indian Chronology were wont to express doubts as to such great age of Indian institutions. If real data could be found on which the fact of the hoary age of Indian civilisation could be established, they would certainly serve two causes at the same time—the cause of human knowledge and the cause of India's self-realisation. The latter, to Mr. Tilak's mind, must have been the more appealing at the time. Whatever his immediate motives were or were not, the fact stands out clearly that he ably attempted to prove that the hymns of the Rig-veda were composed prior to 4000 B.C.

The same care that Mr. Tilak bestowed