rman Sanskritist's chronology, I cannot
resist the desire to show, be it only to Russia, on what a fragile
basis are founded his scientific discussions, and how little he is to
be trusted when he pronounces upon the antiquity of this or that
manuscript. These pages are of a superficial and descriptive nature,
and, as such, make no pretense to profound learning, so that what
follows may seem incongruous. But it must be remembered that in Russia,
as elsewhere in Europe, people estimate the value of this philological
light by the points of exclamation lavished upon him by his admiring
followers, and that no one reads the Veda Bhashaya of Swami Dayanand.
It may even be that I shall not be far from the truth in saying that the
very existence of this work is ignored, which may perhaps be a fortunate
fact for the reputation of Professor Max Muller. I shall be as brief as
possible. When Professor Max Muller states, in his Sahitya-Grantha, that
the Aryan tribe in India acquired the notion of God step by step and
very slowly, he evidently wishes to prove that the Vedas are far from
being as old as is supposed by some of his colleagues. Having presented,
in due course, some more or less valuable evidence to prove the truth
of this new theory, he ends with a fact which, in his opinion, is
indisputable. He points to the word hiranya-garbha in the mantrams,
which he translates by the word "gold," and adds that, as the part
of the Vedas called chanda appeared 3,100 years ago, the part called
mantrams could not have been written earlier than 2,900 years ago.
Let me remind the reader that the Vedas are divided into two parts:
chandas--slokas, verses, etc.; and mantrams--prayers and rhythmical
hymns, which are, at the same time, incantations used in white magic.
Professor Max Muller divides the mantram ("Agnihi Poorwebhihi,"
etc.) philologically and chronologically, and, finding in it the word
hiranya-garbha, he denounces it as an anachronism. The ancients, he
says, had no knowledge of gold, and, therefore, if gold is mentioned in
this mantram it means that the mantram was composed at a comparatively
modern epoch, and so on.

But here the illustrious Sanskritist is very much mistaken. Swami
Dayanand and other pandits, who sometimes are far from being Dayanand's
allies, maintain that Professor Max Muller has completely misunderstood
the meaning of the term hiranya. Originally it did not mean, and, when
united to the word garbha, even now