04-13-2004, 11:01 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Next he assumed that the 4 Indic classes were sequential and went on to assign each an arbitary 200 year window and extrapolated the vedic date<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is the kind of reasoning which can hardly be classed as scholarly and deserves the characterization of 'being pulled out of thin air'. Why 200 years and not 2000 . Apart from the fact that such a choice of intervals between each veda is entirely arbitrary, one must remember that the period of recorded history is only a very miniscule fragment of human history. There is enough reason to surmise that even a single Veda like the Rg might have spanned several hundred years( a fact that even Max Mueller emphasized) and that all the mandalas of the Rg were certainly not written during the same time interval spanning less than 100 years. In any event we should not be disputing max Muellers construction of the date for the Rg since he himself substantially repudiated his own dating at a later time.
Since we were on the subject of Tilak, i was merely pointing out that Tilak himself was inclined to a more distant past for the migrations, when he specifically alludes to interglacial migrations and had categrically rejected a later date. Incidentally, as HH has pointed out, the date that Tilak comes up with is substantially in agreement with that of Herman Jacobi. Koenraad Elst gives a good summary of the astronomical data and the authors who have alluded to the astronomical dating of the Rg.
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch21.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->2. Astronomical data and the Aryan question
2.1. DATING THE RG-VEDA
The determination of the age in which Vedic literature started and flourished has its consequences for the Aryan Invasion question. The oldest text, the Rg-Veda, is full of precise references to places and natural phenomena in what are now Panjab and Haryana, and was unmistakably composed in that part of India. The date at which it was composed is a firm terminus ante quem for the entry of the Vedic Aryans into India. They may have come from abroad or they may have been fully native, but by the time of the Rg-Veda, they were certainly Indians without memory of a foreign homeland.
In a rather shoddy way, Friedrich Max Müller launched the hypothesis that the Rg-Veda had to be dated to about 1200 BC, and eventhough he later retracted it, that arbitrary guess has become the orthodoxy.1 It is forgotten too often that in his own day, other scholars rejected this extremely late date on a variety of grounds. Maurice Winternitz based his estimate on purely philological considerations: âWe cannot explain the development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point.â2 Isnât it refreshing to find how logical and unprejudiced the early researchers were? You cannot credibly cram the complicated linguistic, cultural and philosophical developments which are in evidence in Vedic literature, into just a few centuries.
But since this argument of plausibility can always be countered with the argument that unlikely developments are not strictly impossible, we need a firmer basis to decide this chronological question. The most explicit chronology would be provided by astronomical markers of time.
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Footnotes:Â
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1The story of Max Müllerâs chronology and its impact is told by N.S Rajaram: The Politics of History, Voice of India, Delhi 1995, ch.3.
2M. Winternitz: History of Indian Literature (1907, reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1987), vol. 1, p.288.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Elst concludes after a fairly exhaustive discussion'
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->2. Astronomical data and the Aryan question
2.5. CONCLUSION
The astronomical lore in Vedic literature provides elements of an absolute chronology in a consistent way. For what it is worth, this corpus of astronomical indications suggests that the Rg-Veda was completed in the 4th millennium AD, that the core text of the Mahabharata was composed at the end of that millennium, and that the Brahmanas and Sutras are products of the high Harappan period towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC. This corpus of evidence is hard to reconcile with the AIT, and has been standing as a growing challenge to the AIT defenders for two centuries.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is the kind of reasoning which can hardly be classed as scholarly and deserves the characterization of 'being pulled out of thin air'. Why 200 years and not 2000 . Apart from the fact that such a choice of intervals between each veda is entirely arbitrary, one must remember that the period of recorded history is only a very miniscule fragment of human history. There is enough reason to surmise that even a single Veda like the Rg might have spanned several hundred years( a fact that even Max Mueller emphasized) and that all the mandalas of the Rg were certainly not written during the same time interval spanning less than 100 years. In any event we should not be disputing max Muellers construction of the date for the Rg since he himself substantially repudiated his own dating at a later time.
Since we were on the subject of Tilak, i was merely pointing out that Tilak himself was inclined to a more distant past for the migrations, when he specifically alludes to interglacial migrations and had categrically rejected a later date. Incidentally, as HH has pointed out, the date that Tilak comes up with is substantially in agreement with that of Herman Jacobi. Koenraad Elst gives a good summary of the astronomical data and the authors who have alluded to the astronomical dating of the Rg.
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch21.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->2. Astronomical data and the Aryan question
2.1. DATING THE RG-VEDA
The determination of the age in which Vedic literature started and flourished has its consequences for the Aryan Invasion question. The oldest text, the Rg-Veda, is full of precise references to places and natural phenomena in what are now Panjab and Haryana, and was unmistakably composed in that part of India. The date at which it was composed is a firm terminus ante quem for the entry of the Vedic Aryans into India. They may have come from abroad or they may have been fully native, but by the time of the Rg-Veda, they were certainly Indians without memory of a foreign homeland.
In a rather shoddy way, Friedrich Max Müller launched the hypothesis that the Rg-Veda had to be dated to about 1200 BC, and eventhough he later retracted it, that arbitrary guess has become the orthodoxy.1 It is forgotten too often that in his own day, other scholars rejected this extremely late date on a variety of grounds. Maurice Winternitz based his estimate on purely philological considerations: âWe cannot explain the development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point.â2 Isnât it refreshing to find how logical and unprejudiced the early researchers were? You cannot credibly cram the complicated linguistic, cultural and philosophical developments which are in evidence in Vedic literature, into just a few centuries.
But since this argument of plausibility can always be countered with the argument that unlikely developments are not strictly impossible, we need a firmer basis to decide this chronological question. The most explicit chronology would be provided by astronomical markers of time.
Â
Â
Footnotes:Â
Â
1The story of Max Müllerâs chronology and its impact is told by N.S Rajaram: The Politics of History, Voice of India, Delhi 1995, ch.3.
2M. Winternitz: History of Indian Literature (1907, reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1987), vol. 1, p.288.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Elst concludes after a fairly exhaustive discussion'
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->2. Astronomical data and the Aryan question
2.5. CONCLUSION
The astronomical lore in Vedic literature provides elements of an absolute chronology in a consistent way. For what it is worth, this corpus of astronomical indications suggests that the Rg-Veda was completed in the 4th millennium AD, that the core text of the Mahabharata was composed at the end of that millennium, and that the Brahmanas and Sutras are products of the high Harappan period towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC. This corpus of evidence is hard to reconcile with the AIT, and has been standing as a growing challenge to the AIT defenders for two centuries.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->