Edward Washburn Hopkins

Storm and mountain belong to the very marrow of the Rigveda

We must, I think, suppose that the Avesta and RV. viii. are younger than RV. ii.-vii.; or else that the poets of viii. were geographically nearer to the Avestan people, and so took from them certain words

Edward Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D. (September 8, 1857 – July 16, 1932), an American Sanskrit scholar, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Quotes

• Plato IS full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him, but taken from Pythagoras. Before the sixth century B.C. all the religious- philosophical Idea of Pythagoras are current in India (L. Schroeder, Pythagoras). If there were but one or two of these cases, they might be set aside as accidental coincidences, but such coincidences are too numerous to be the result of change."
  • Hopkins, Edward Washburn Religions of India p.559-560 as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

• Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the Sankhyan system, before they became so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous three qualities of the Sankhyan reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes'."
  • Hopkins, Edward Washburn Religions of India p.559-560 as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

Prāgāthikāni, 1896

Prāgāthikāni. Hopkins, Edward W. pp. 23-92 in JAOS (Journal of the American Oriental Society), Vol. 17. Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The vocabulary of the Kaṇva maṇḍala [8] often coincides with that of the Atri maṇḍala [5] when it shows no correspondence with that of other family books. This subject deserves special treatment.
  • p. 29

• Priya compounds are a formation common in Smṛti [....] Epic [....] In AV, VS, and Brāhmaṇa [....] but known in RV only to books viii, i, ix, x.
  • 66

• viii with the General Books and post-Rik literature agrees with Avestan as against the early family books.
  • 73

• viii joins the later Avesta to post-Rik literature and the other General Books.
  • 74

• To point to the list of words common to the Avesta and viii [of the Rigveda] with its group, and say that here is proof positive that there is closer relationship with the Avesta, and that, therefore, viii after all is older than the books which have not preserved these words, some of which are of great significance, would be a first thought. But this explanation is barred out by the fact that most of these Avestan words preserved in viii, withal those of the most importance, are common words in the literature posterior to the Rik. Hence to make the above claim would be tantamount to saying that these words have held their own through the period to which viii (assuming it to be older than ii-vii) is assigned, have thereupon disappeared, and then come into vogue again after the interval to which the maker of this assumption would assign ii-vii. This, despite all deprecation of negative evidence, is not credible. Take, for instance, udara or uṣṭra or meṣa, the first is found only in viii., i., x.; the second in viii., i.; the last in viii., i., ix., x. Is it probable that words so common both early and late should have passed through an assumedly intermediate period (of ii.-vii.) without leaving a trace? Or, again: is a like assumption credible in the case of kṣīra, which appears in the Iranian khshīra; in RV. viii., i., ix., x.; disappears in the assumedly later group ii.-vii.; and reappears in the AV. and later literature as a common word? Evidently, the facts are not explained on the hypothesis that the Avesta and RV. viii. are older than RV. ii.-vii.
  • 80-81

• We must, I think, suppose that the Avesta and RV. viii. are younger than RV. ii.-vii.; or else that the poets of viii. were geographically nearer to the Avestan people, and so took from them certain words, which may or may not have been old with their Iranian users, but were not received into the body of Vedic literature until a time posterior to the composition of ii.-vii.
  • 80-81. quoted in [1] Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• the intermediate character of v, between viii and the other family books.
  • 88

• [there are a great many] evidences of special rapport between viii and v.
  • 89

The Punjab and the Rigveda, 1898

Hopkins, Edward Washburn. “The Puñjâb and the Rig-Veda.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 19, 1898, pp. 19–28. Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• if the first home of the Aryans can be determined at all by the conditions topographical and meteorological, described in their early hymns, then decidedly the Punjab was not that home. For here there are neither mountains nor monsoon storms to burst, yet storm and mountain belong to the very marrow of the Rigveda... If there is an area which fulfils these conditions, according to Hopkins, it is ―a district […] where monsoon storms and mountain scenery are found, that district, namely, which lies South of Umballa (or Ambālā). It is here, in my opinion, that the Rigveda, taken as a whole, was composed. In every particular, this locality fulfils the physical conditions under which the composition of the hymns was possible, and what is of paramount importance, is the first district east of the Indus that does so.
  • 20

• [a homeland decidedly east of the Punjab] is supported even by native traditions. At a very early (Brahmanic) period the Northerners‘ are regarded as a suspicious sort of people, whose religious practices, far from being authoritative, are censured. No tradition associates the ancient literature with the Punjāb. In fact, save for one exception, even the legal manuals do not take cognizance of the Northwest. They have the stanza that defines Āryāvarta, and also the stanzas that extend the geographical boundary still further south; but they ignore the North.
  • 20

• Manu, however, has one verse that in connection with this subject is of interest, and deserves to be translated, though till now it never has been rendered into English. I refer to ii. 17, and translate in paraphrase: "The country divinely meted out by the rivers Sarasouti and Ghuggar, and lying between them, is where the (Rig, etc.) Veda arose, and hence is called brahmavarta or 'home of the Veda' in the tradition of the learned."

• The second book of Manu is concerned with the correct dharma and conduct of the twice-born...The following verses then show what are the less authoritative, but still authoritative countries. In abstract this appears thus: (The district between the Sarasvati and Dhrsadvatl is the home of the Veda); the religious practices found in this country are those of the good. Next to this lies the country south of it (from Thanesar to Mathura),' which is the district of the seers of the Veda (brahmarsidepa), and from Brahmans of this district are to be learned the practices of men to-day. Taking a wider sweep, all the country from west to east between the place where the Sarasouti disappears in the desert and that where the Jumna disappears in the Ganges, and from north to south between the Himalayas and the Vindhya hills is the ' Middle Land.' The ' home of the Aryans' (Aryavarta), as it is called, is the country between these mountains and the two seas.

• The Punjab is thus omitted altogether from the list. The most western locality is the place where the Sarasouti disappears in the north-west, and the Arabian Sea, west of the southern line of the Vindhyas.

• That, as Nandana observes at this point (sloka 22), each country is given in the order of its authority, the best being first, is clear not only from the last verse, but from the one that follows it. For here it is stated that the ' district fit for sacrifice ' is all the country forming the natural habitat of the black buck, and this differs from the 'country of barbarians' in that the latter is not a place fit for the twice-born to live in. 'Natural habitat ' is not to be taken with the Commentators as making a distinction between country and town, but between the plains and the hills. The Gangetic plain and the country about Kuruksetra, between Delhi and Umballa and south of the former locality, is still the 'natural habitat' of the black buck. This account in Manu concludes with the words: " thus have I briefly expounded to you the home (yoni) of dharma, and its origin (sanmbhavta)."