Thank you Sudhirji for having kindly invited me to this August gathering of scholars. I am obliged to you, I am obliged to the IGNCA. I pay my respect and regards to these scholars present in this hall and seek their blessings.
The title of my paper, my presentation is chronology of the Vedic literature, a plea to relook at the date of the Rig Veda. It is well known that in spite of their prolific literary activities, the Indian authors, unlike their Roman, Greek and Chinese counterparts, never care to mention the exact date of their literary creations, prompting one Indologist long ago to remark that the dates assigned to Sanskrit works are more or less like paper pins which are taken out from an old bunch of papers and are fixed onto a new one as per requirements. Of all the literary works of the antiquity, the texts about the historical date of which the Indians were least concerned and mostly even today are, were the Vedas.
For them, they existed since the beginning of the creation or at least since such a hoary point of time in the past that it was pointless to go after their date. Veda means knowledge and knowledge cannot be created, it cannot be produced, it exists there forever, it can either be revealed to us or can be discovered by us. Words and sentences are not the Veda, Veda is the knowledge enshrined in them, an element which is neither created nor destroyed.
Therefore, when the scholars like Max Muller cautiously suggested a date of approximately 1200 BC for the beginning of the Vedic literature, which however towards the last part of his life he recanted, most of the orthodox Hindus were taken aback, although later in the beginning of the 20th century in 1907, the Prager Indologist Morris Winternitz in his history of Indian literature liberally tried to push back the date to 2500 or at least 2000 BC in the last paragraph of his treatment of Vedic literature with the words, I quote, we cannot explain the development of the whole of the literature if we assume the date as late as 1200 or 1500 BC as its starting point. Yet the date suggested previously by Max Muller stuck so deeply in the mind of the scholars that many standard works even today go on harping on it. For example, a relatively recent publication, History of the World, that is Harper Collins, London 2008, of the Times book, Richard Overy is the editor, Oxford, the learned author remarks the early history of India is very difficult to recover.
Little can be learned from written evidence. The earliest work of Indian literature, the Vedas, were composed in the centuries after 1200 BC, but they were not written down until probably the 5th century. I wonder in which script they were written down.
I think that with the tremendous advancement of our knowledge in the field of archaeology, ethnography and linguistics, etc. such views arrived purely on the basis of speculations and estimates in the 19th century seriously need to be revisited. The older theory of the Aryan invasion on India after there is split from the Iranians in around 1800 to 1600 BC, their migration towards India and their conquest of the northwestern part of India after suppressing the indigenous population has now been finally given up since long due to the results arrived at by subsequent researches, especially after the French Indologist James Schaeffer established in 1993 that there is no evidence of invasion in this region from outside, none of the Indus Saraswati sites have yielded proofs of war and the ethnographical studies of the skulls and other bone parts over the entire period of this Indus Valley culture, which is roughly 3500 BC to 1800 BC along with a still older phase discovered at Mehrgarh going back to 7000-6000 BC show absolutely no change or shift in the local population.
In fact, the studies show that the physical traits of the people of today's Punjab or today's Gujarat are pretty much the same as those of the Mohenjodaro or Lothal or their Lothal ancestors. The scholars have yet to come to an agreement on the place of the origin of the Indo-Europeans or their previous location and also the approximate time of their diffusion. The reasons for their sudden migrations into all directions from whatever the place they were living earlier Central Asia, Ukraine, Russian steppes, Eastern Europe, grassland near Caspian Sea, Caucasus etc.
etc. are not known. Also, the dates of their dispersion vary from 7500 to 3500 BC according to the estimates of different scholars.
I think the previous date that is 7500 may be nearer to this historical event though the dispersion might have been going on over a long time and must have taken place in many phases. The reason for their large-scale migration, the reason for the large-scale migration is important shall perhaps forever remain a mystery. Why?
Why should they leave their homeland and disperse in all the directions? So, this reason and any estimate on the number of their men who filled up the whole Europe and a sizable part of Asia that is Iran, India and complete Europe. How many of them were there and around 7000 BC and the population was so thin?
This will always be a contestable guess. We find them historically first of all in Anatolia in around 2200 BC as Hittites and after about 200 years in the Aegean islands establishing Mycenaean empire and culture. This is also the time when the Indo -Iranian group is supposed to have pushed southeast towards Iran.
The Mycenaeans Indo-Europeans spoke a kind of archaic Greek which we now know thanks to the decipherment of the linear b script of their inscriptions in 1952. There is hardly any semblance of a close affinity at that time among the languages Vedic Sanskrit Hittite and Mycenaean. They are so very different from each other.
It must be presumed that the older we go especially to the date of the assumed separation of the languages the more should be the similarity. As for Hittite it may have been a branch of the pre-proto Indo-European as some linguists suggest but the archaic Greek of the Mycenaean and the Vedic Sanskrit should and ought to show much higher degree of closeness if the dispersion took place as late as 3500 BC or so. Vedic Sanskrit appears to be much more archaic in form and phonetics than Mycenaean.
Further both cultures have almost no correspondence in the names and functions of their deities except the way the Ope of the Mycenaean with a feminine Divya and the Vedic Deus, Sky, not yet a deity. The Mycenaean counterpart of the Vedic Indra, the god, the king of the gods is Vanaks not heard of anywhere else. There are also more than one opinions about the settlement of the people of Metani ruling over the southwestern part of the near east that is Mesopotamia, Barcelona around 1500 to 1400 BC.
They have worshipped Vedic gods Indra, Varuna, Mitra and Nasatya. It is mysterious how a work on the training of horses composed in Sanskrit reaches this part of the world and is translated by the scholar Kikuli in the local Hurrian language around the same time who leaves a number of technical terms as untranslated in his work which enables us to guess the state of Sanskrit phonetics of those times. This is later than the Vedic Sanskrit and can best be termed as Vedic Prakrit or even northwestern Prakrit of Gandhari variety.
We have Aika for Eka, Tera this is three Sanskrit Sanskrit Pancha, Satta Sanskrit Sapt, Na for Nava, Asu for Ashwa, Vartana which means round it is the same in Sanskrit, Babru this is Sanskrit Babru, Parita Sanskrit Palita, Pinkara Sanskrit Pingala, Marya, Marya is the same. Marya means human being usually a man and besides a host of personal names of pure Sanskrit origin like Chitrarath, Brihadashva, Subandhu etc. in their inscriptions.
These phonetically a little modified personal names as well as the phonetic changes of certain words indicate a strong similarity with Dardic languages which often drop aspiration and substitute Z for Ja or even Cha like Punjabi Panj or five. It is incomprehensible why some scholars like Romila Thapar strangely claim that the phonetic forms of the Mithani inscriptions are older than the Vedic language whereas it is obvious that the names of the Mithani kings and the technical terms of Kikuli show a stage which we may term as I said previously Vedic Prakrit, Satta for Sapta, Tera for Trayas, Panj for Panch, Brihadashva for Brihadashva, Babru for Babru, Arthashamara for Ritashmar, Chitaratha for Chitraratha, Tvisharatha for Tvisharatha, one who has fast chariot are crying to be declared as forms of a later Vedic dialect. On this criteria itself the composition of the Rig Veda must be considered as much prior to the Mohas Koi from where these inscriptions have been found, inscriptions at Alia.
Further Mithanis were not the only people to worship Vedic gods, the Kassites of Mesopotamia 1400 to 1100 BC also did it who had Indra, Surya and Marut among their deities and who used the word Shimalaya for their mountains. One of the most compelling arguments towards favouring an earlier date for the composition of the Vedic hymns is the unmatched glorification of the Nadi Tama river Saraswati in the Rig Veda which lost its existence between 1900 to 1750 BC as a wide stream flowing from the mountains right up to ocean that is up to Arabian sea. Compare Rig Veda so and so.
As the geographical studies and the satellite images have conclusively proved and as is well known this happened due to tectonic disturbances which caused the catchment area of Saraswati in the Shivalik mountains rising and getting tilted towards Yamuna so that its water got merged with the flow of that river. The attempts to prove Saraswati as identical with the insignificant river Harahwaiti of Afghanistan which loses itself in desert have proved futile and have been rejected by most of the scholars. That the so designated nomadic Indo-Aryans crossed the high passes of the Hindukush mountains with horses and especially chariots is another myth which requires to be busted.
India has been invaded again and again in the past 2000 years and even earlier from the west but no intruder or attacker brought his army in India on chariots neither Alexander nor the Muslims. Chariots are simply unsuitable for maneuvering mountain passes of Hindukush mountains. It appears that neither wheeled vehicles nor horses were introduced into India for the first time by the so-called Aryans.
Both are present in the Saraswati culture sites. Bones of horses have been discovered at three places and one of them belongs to even pre-Indus valley site. They may be indigenous or they may have been imported from outside but their presence is well attested in India in the third fourth millennium BC.
In fact the problem of the invention of or let us say development of the chariot as a means of transport and for use in war is complicated. There are three claimants for the development of this technology. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Mesopotamia.
Further the dates given are usually 2000 BC however the designation of a number of parts of both types of vehicles appear to be of Indo-European origin. The Sanskrit Ratha is Latin Rota, Rotary. German Rad, this is wheel.
Sanskrit Akshi in European languages is Axis Latin or Akshi in German, Axis in English. Chakra is Greek Kyuklos. Kyuklos, this K, this word is borrowed by Romans in the sense of wheels and Romans write their Ka, the sound Ka with C not with K.
Whenever there is a K it shows that it's a Greek word and so the Romans pronounced it as Kyuklos and later on this Cy in third fourth century was came to be pronounced as Cy. So cycle, cycle or cycles which is a very common word with the common people as well means originally a wheel. English wheel is also Chakra.
I won't go into the date it's how this phonetically changed into wheel. Similarly Nabi, Neb and Ara of Sanskrit have their Indo-European correspondences. Sanskrit Anas which means load, weight, cart is Latin Onas.
Hittites are supposed to have had the best chariots of their times already in the 22nd BC. The invention of chariot therefore must be placed at a time when most of the communities were living together. In fact one of the very often advanced arguments by German Indologists whom I studied, they said that they were of the opinion that the chariot was invented only in 18 and in BC.
So and since Aryans came to India with their chariots so they could not have come to India before 1800 BC. But we have existence of chariots with an Indo-European community already in 2200 and Hittites and these Maitranis, Mittanis. Mittanis are nothing but they are the people of a split group of Maitrani shakha who were living in Afghanistan in those days and they migrated from Afghanistan.
So sometimes later on Mittani there is a separate. Some scholars have pointed towards the use of the word Ayas in the Rig Veda which as well as its derivative Ayas means iron in the classical Sanskrit to substantiate the argument for a later date of the Vedas. Since the iron age in India begins in the 12th century BC.
Before that we have bronze age, copper age etc. but iron the first iron implements in India were found in 12th or 11th century BC. Iron is mentioned for the first time in Yajur Veda not in Rig Veda.
Then Ayas then it becomes Lohayas, Lauha Ayas that is red Ayas and now we use only the word Loha. Most of the Indologists among along with the Indo-European linguists since the word is found in other Indo-European languages as well this Ayas are against assigning the meaning of iron to it iron to this word and only general meaning of metal or ore like English ore or German earths is accepted for it. For the dating of the last portion of the Shatapatha Brahmana the findings of the marine excavation of the submerged city of Dwarka have proved to be of great help.
It is namely mentioned in the Mahabharata and also in the Bhagavad Purana etc. that the city of Dwarka was destroyed and got submerged after the demise of Krishna that is shortly after the Mahabharata war. The concluding chapter of the Shatapatha Brahmana mentions the name of Parikshit the grandson of Pandava Arjun and also of his great-grandson Janamejay who performed this Nav Yagya.
The date of the submersion of the city of Dwarka has been arrived at through a number of historical and oceanographical evidences as having taken place around 1400 to 1350 BC therefore a date close to this period by say 1 to 200 years or around 1200 to 1100 BC for the conclusion of the Shatapatha Brahmana would look quite plausible which is also attested by an astronomical reference found in the portion of the Agni Chayan of this work which recommends that the construction of the fire altar for performing domestic sacrifices should be started during the time of the vernal equinox that is 21st to 22nd March when the sun rises exactly in the east in the constellation of the Krittikas. You know perhaps this quotation famous the equinox of the in the Kartikas is started to take place important around 2100 BC and ended around 1150 BC hence the statement of the Shatapatha Brahmana can be valid only for this period about 900 to 1000. When we are now with the astronomical data for determining the dates of the Vedic text let me also mention that one should also give due consideration to a very significant reference found in the text of the Vedanga Jyotish that the summer solstice that is 22nd June takes place in the month of Shravan in the constellation of middle of Ashlesha and the winter solstice in the month of Magha in the beginning of the constellation of Shravishtha or Dhanishtha which points towards a period of around 1350 to around 800 BC that famous shloka this can exactly be calculated due to the phenomena of the precession of the seasons which is caused by the wobbling of our globe causing shifting of the position of the north pole it takes around 970 years for the solstices or equinoxes to shift back to the previous nakshatra that is 13.
2 degrees Makar Sankranti takes place on 14th or 15th of January nowadays it ought to take place on 22nd of December this is because of the precession of our seasons it is well known that the spoken language of the common people during the time of Mahavira and Buddha was middle indo-european that is Prakrit and Pali which also means that these languages must have been invoked for at least 200 years before them or since 800 8th to 7th century BC if we postulate a period of 1500 to 1200 BC for the beginning of the Vedic literature Rig and Atharvaveda etc composed in very archaic Sanskrit where where shall we place the development of the ordinarily spoken Sanskrit from which these two Prakrit languages have evolved that these Prakrit dialects have developed directly from Vedic Sanskrit by bypassing classical Sanskrit which is found in its full bloom in the later Brahmana texts and the Upanishads should be linguistically not a very sound position there may be a few and some very faint traces of Vedic Sanskrit in the grammatical forms of Prakrit like Devehi for Devebhi derived from Devebhi but to derive it directly from the archaic Vedic Sanskrit is going too far in the attempt to compress the development of one language into another language which is phonetically radically different from the previous one for the development of say Ashokan Prakrit or the mid 3rd century BC from the Vedic language used in the Rigveda and Atharveda we need a much longer period and the development must run through the spoken and simpler form of the classical Sanskrit. I am here not hastening to declare the Vedic Aryans as the authors of the Indus Saraswati civilization but it is noteworthy that the sites like Lothal in Gujarat and Kali Bangan in Rajasthan have yielded Vedic altars for offering sacrifices and presently many archaeologists are tending towards this opinion. The development of Indian philosophical tradition from the Rigveda and the Atharveda to Jainism and Buddhism also presupposes quite a long period for its coming into being.
Mahavira's preachings were based on the preachings of Parshvanath who is supposed to have founded the sect of the Nirgrantha and lived in the 8th century BC. The sect later came to be known as Jainism in the refined and enlarged form wrought by Mahavira. No Indian philosophical school or sect attaches as great an importance to the theory of karma as Jainism does and the theory of is entirely based on the theory of Apurva developed by Mimansa to explain the positive outcome of the ritualistic performances.
This again is based on the ritual texts like Kalpa Sutras and the Brahmanas which develop the ritual incorporating after a careful selection relevant of relevant Vedic mantras from the Sanghitas for use in the sacrificial rites although they very often have a different meaning and context in the Vedas. To develop an extensive ritual involving a number of various forms of sacrifices and to develop an exegetical literature which gives a proper cosmological, mythological and philosophical explanation to every single action performed in every rite constituting the sacrifice can be done and is only possible when people are peacefully settled for a long time in a country. It is not done in the pastoral society of nomads which some scholars believe the Indo -Aryans were.
How long the loose verses of the Vedic hymns of praise took to assume the character of sacrificial formulae with magic force we do not know but sufficiently long time must have elapsed before such a crucial development took place. Rig Vedic verses are parts of the hymns of praise they are not mantras in the later sense of the term that is magic formula. The word mantra accruing in the Rig Veda has the meaning of thoughts, opinions or intentions from the root man.
They are not holy spells, the Rig Vedic verses are not holy spells to be used in accompaniment with sacrificial rites. Further, we should not ignore the fact that there is a vast difference in the archaic language of the Rig Veda as against the lucid and simple spoken language of the Brahmanas which is much nearer to classical Sanskrit and which is an indication for a long gap between the Sanghitas and the Brahmanas. So, my argument was that when these hymns of praise or the verses which are which were uttered in praise of gods they became so holy that they were used as mantras or magic formula for performing a Vedic rite.
So, this must have taken quite a long time because these verses became then holy. The same thing has happened with the many other texts which were considered like Jainas, they have Om Namo Arihantanam, Om Namo Ayuryanam etc. This they use as mantras now which is simply a stuti and Tulsi Dasa's chaupais are also used sometimes for performance of many pujas.
Anybody who has engaged himself with the Vedic literature knows well that the Vedic poets are firmly rooted in the territory in which they live. They extol their country, their mountains and their rivers, mention only their people, their neighbours like Paktas, Paktas are Pakhtons or Pathans of today's Afghanistan and Balkhas, the Bactrians. Their flora and fauna exhibit no consciousness of any other previous homeland nor of their migration from any other place which shows that either they entered into the land of the origin of the Vedas so long ago that all public memory about their previous habitat was totally obliterated or else they were original inhabitants of the territory since very beginning.
Now conclusion, I think there is much substance of historical nature in the traditional view of the ancient Indian authors in whose opinion the hymns of the Vedas were traditionally handed down in various families of sages and some enterprising disciples of Vyasa like Paila and his colleagues collected them over a considerable period through personal contact to form what is now known as Sanghitas or collections, a word which means collection and by the way I believe that this first selection must have had a shape in black and white in whatever script otherwise no proper division is possible as which Rig Veda shows. The dates given for this activity are the beginning of the Kali era that is in or around 3000 BC, 3100 BC or so because the Kali era starts in 300 3102 BC for the composition of the hymns we must go back the dates given for the activity are the beginning dates for collection the dates given for this activity collection of the hymns are the beginning of the Kali era for the composition of the hymns composition of the hymns we must go many decades or even a few hundred years back all this means on the other hand that if the theory of the Aryan migration to India is to be upheld we have to agree on a quite earlier diffusion of the Indo-Europeans and their migration as well as the presence of its Indian branch at least around 4000 BC or so in north eastern India concurrently with the authors of the early phase of the Indus Saraswati civilization if they themselves have not been the same for which many convincing historical evidences have started coming up it is possible that the Indian group of the proto -Indo-Aryans split off from its parent group quite early migrated towards India via Iran got settled and naturalized in the northwestern part of Indian subcontinent including what is today Afghanistan and Bactria still maintaining their contact with the central and western Asia which enabled them to keep update with the technological advancements like spoked wheel.
