Timeline of Hindu texts
6 quotes
"We may reasonably argue that such a fixed form and substance would not easily be possible in the beginnings of thought and psychological experience or even during their early progress and unfold- ing. We may therefore surmise that our Sanhita represents the close of a period, not its commencement, nor even some of its successive stages. It is even possible that its most ancient hymns are a comparatively modern development or version of a more ancient lyric evangel couched in the freer and more pliable forms of a still earlier human speech... The Veda itself speaks constantly of 'ancient' and 'modern' Rishis tpurvebhib... nutanaihy. the former remote enough to be regarded as a kind of demigods, the first founders of knowledge."
"Max Muller's dating of the Veda illustrates the arbitrariness involved in the production of theories that are then propagated as "facts" in generations of schoolbooks."
"By his [= Playfair’s] attempt to uphold the antiquity of Hindu books against absolute facts, he thereby supports all those horrid abuses and impositions found in them, under the pretended sanction of antiquity. Nay, his aim goes still deeper, for by the same means he endeavours to overturn the Mosaic account, and sap the very foundation of our religion: for if we are to believe in the antiquity of Hindu books, as he would wish us, then the Mosaic account is all a fable, or a fiction."
"It was once said that dates in Indian studies are like bowling pins, set up only to be knocked down later. I do not think that this ought to stop us from making suggestions."
"All attempts to date the Vedic literature on linguistic grounds have failed miserably for the simple reason that (a) the conclusions of comparative philology are often speculative and (b) no one has yet suceeded in showing how much change should take place in a language in a given period."
"The calculations and conjectures of Professor Muller cannot be looked upon as having in any essential manner contributed to the final settlement of the question. Doubtless he would himself make no such pretensions in their favor; but he is in danger of being misunderstood as doing so; we have already more than once seen it stated that "Muller has ascertained the date of the Vedas to be 1200-1000 B. C.," or to that effect."