Timeline of Hindu texts

It is quite clear that we cannot fix a terminum a quo, whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years BC, no power on earth will ever determine. ~ Max Muller

Hindu scriptures are traditionally classified into two parts: śruti, meaning "what has been heard" (originally transmitted orally) and smriti, meaning "what has been retained or remembered" (originally written, and attributed to individual authors). The Vedas are classified under śruti.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · From Hindu texts · See also · External links

A

• Only relative chronology has been well argued for.
  • Aklujkar, A. 1996 ‘The Early History of Sanskrit as Supreme Language’ in E.M. Houben (ed) Ideology and Status of Sanskrit… Leiden, Brill.

• 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.
  • Sri Aurobindo, quoted in The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992.

B

• 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.
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. page 307

• 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.
  • John Bentley: Hindu Astronomy, republished by Shri Publ., Delhi 1990, p.xxvii

G

• The whole foundation of Mueller's date [for the Rigveda] rests on the authority of Somadeva, the author of 'an Ocean of (or rather for) the River of Stories' who narrated his tales in the twelfth century after Christ. Somadeva, I am satisfied, would not be a little surprised to learn that 'a European point of view" raises a 'ghost story' of his to the dignity of an historical document.
  • Goldstucker, Theodore. [1860] 1965. Panini. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office. [1]

K

• The period between the arrival of the Indo-Aryan in the Indian subcontinent and the composition of the oldest Vedic hymns must have been much longer than was previously thought.
  • Kuiper, F. B. J. 1967. “The Genesis of a Linguistic Area”, Indo-Iranian Journal 10.2-3: 81-102. (Rpt. in International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 3.1 [1974]: 135-153.) Kuiper (1967: 97)
  • Naturally, the quotes from this individual represent only his personal opinions, which may differ from the mainstream perspective.

• The opinions of best researchers in the matter of the age of the Ṛgveda differed not by a few centuries but by a few thousands of years.
  Now it is clear that the presumption of 200 years for each of the literary epochs in the birth of the Veda is purely arbitrary... it was strangely forgotten on how weak a footing the prevailing view actually stood.
  • Ketkar, S. (Trans.) (1987, 1927). Maurice Winternitz’s A History of Indian Literature. Calcutta: University of Calcutta. Quoted in Reclaiming Sanskrit Studies 03) Manjushree Hegde_ (Ed.) Dr. K. S. Kannan - RECLAIMING RĀMĀYAṆA. 3-Infinity Foundation India (2018)

L

• 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.
  • S. H. Levitt, "Vedic–Ancient Mesopotamian Interconnections and the Dating of the Indian Tradition", Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 93 (2012), pp. 137-192

M

• It is quite clear that we cannot fix a terminum a quo, whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years BC, no power on earth will ever determine.
  • Max Muller, Collected Works, Vol.II, p.91. Quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
  • Naturally, the quotes from this individual represent only his personal opinions, which may differ from the mainstream perspective.

• I need hardly say that I agree with almost every word of my critics. I have repeatedly dwelt on the merely hypothetical character of the dates which I ventured to assign to the first three periods of Vedic literature. All I have claimed for them has been that they are minimum dates, and that the literary productions of each period which either still exist or which formerly existed, could hardly be accounted for within shorter limits of time than those suggested.
  • Max Muller. Preface to the text of the Rigveda, Vol.4, p.xiii. [2], quoted in Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • Naturally, the quotes from this individual represent only his personal opinions, which may differ from the mainstream perspective.

• As to the actual date of the Veda … if we were to place it at 5000 BC, I doubt whether anybody could refute such a date, while if we go back beyond the Veda, and come to measure the time required for the formation of Sanskrit … I doubt whether even 5,000 years would suffice for that. There is an unfathomable depth in language, layer following after layer, long before we arrive at roots, and what a time and what an effort must have been required for their elaboration, and for the elaboration of the ideas expressed in them.
  • Autobiography of Max Muller, quoted in Danino, M., & Nahar, S. (1996). The invasion that never was (1st ed). Mother’s Institute of Research & Mira Aditi, Mysore, India.
  • Naturally, the quotes from this individual represent only his personal opinions, which may differ from the mainstream perspective.

P

• These dates Mueller later insisted were minimum dates only, and latterly there has been a sort of tacit agreement... to date the composition of the Rigveda somewhere about 1400-1500 BC, but without any absolutely conclusive evidence.
  • Stuart Piggott. Prehistoric India. Quoted from B.B. Lal in : Indian History and Culture Society., Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (2012). Bias in Indian historiography. p.8

• That age [of the Rigveda] is not known with even an approximate degree of certainty.
  • A.D. Pusalker , The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. I: The Vedic Age edited by R.C. Majumdar, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Publications, Mumbai, 6th edition 1996. quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993)

V

• 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.
  • K.C. Verma, Mahabharata: Myth and Reality-Differing Views (p.99), Quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993), and quoted at Proof of Vedic culture's global existence

W

• It became a habit already censured by W. D. Whitney, to say that Max Muller had proved 1200-1000 B.C. as the date of the Rg Veda. It was only timidly that a few scholars, like L. von Schroeder ventured to go as far back as 1500 or even 2000 B.C. And when all at once, H. Jacobi attempted to date Vedic literature back to the third millenary B.C. on the grounds of astrological calculations, scholars raised a great outcry at such heretical procedure... Strange to say it has been quite forgotten on what a precarious footing stood the "opinion prevailing hitherto, which was so zealously defended.
  • Winternitz, M. A. [1907] 1962. History of Indian Literature. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.(Winternitz [1907) 1962 256) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• We cannot, however, explain the development of the whole of this great literature, if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 or 1500 B.C. as its starting point. ... The more prudent course, however, is to steer clear of any fixed dates...
  • M. Winternitz (1907:310), in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12 , also quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
  • Naturally, the quotes from this individual represent only his personal opinions, which may differ from the mainstream perspective.

• It is remarkable however how strong the power of suggestion is even in science. Max Muller's hypothetical and purely arbitrary determination of the Vedic epochs in the course of years, received more and more the dignity and the character of a scientifically proven fact, without any new arguments or actual proofs having been added.
  • M. Winternitz, 1927:293, quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 161.

• Oral tradition, too, presupposes longer intervals of time than would be necessary, had these texts been written down. Generations of pupils and teachers must have passed away before all the existing and the many lost texts had taken definite shape in the Vedic schools,
  • M. Winternitz, 1927:302-3, quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 163

• 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.
  • Whitney, W. D. [1874] 1987. Oriental and Linguistic Studies. Delhi: Satguru Publications. [3] quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

V

• It is amazing to note that all the supporters of the date 1200-1000 B.C. for the Veda very conveniently ignore the caution which Max Muller had initially observed.
  • Varma, Kailash Chandra. 1984. The Aryans, the Veda and the Kaliyuga Era of 3102 B.C. Varanasi: Banaras Hindu University. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12