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.

Quotes

• 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. Muller, as I have noted, was fully aware of the arbitrary nature of his calculations (which, as Goldstucker pointed out, were based on a "ghost story" written in the twelfth century C.E.): "I ... have repeatedly dwelt on the hypothetical character of the dates" (1892, xiv). As Whitney noted, however: "We have already more than once seen it stated that 'Muller has ascertained the date of the Vedas to be 1200-1000 B.C.'" ([1874] 1987, 78). Winternitz also objected that "it became a habit . . . to say that Max Muller had proved 1200-1000 B.C. as the date of the Rg Veda. . . . Strange to say it has been quite forgotten on what a precarious footing [this opinion] stood" ([1907] 1962, 256).
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Thus, 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not be a little surprised to learn that 'a European point of view" raises a "ghost story" of his to the dignity of an historical document."
  • Theodore Goldstucker, , quoted in Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (1980). Bias in Indian historiography. Delhi: D.K. Publications. p 48

• Goldstücker ([I860] 1965) objected that "neither is there a single reason to account for his allotting 200 years to the first of his periods, nor for his doubling this amount of time in the case of the Sutra period" (80). He points out that, ultimately, "the whole foundation of Muller's date rests on the authority of Somadeva . . . [who] narrated his tales in the twelfth century after Christ [and] 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" (91).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

• "I need hardly say that I agree with almost every word of my critics. I have repeatedly dwelt on the entirely hypothetical character of the dates 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"
  • Max Muller. (Preface to the text of the Rigveda, Vol.4, p.xiii). Quoted in [1]

• 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 [2]

• 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)

• 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, MMR. quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993)