emains always doubtful. Only in the
case of the Buddhistic writings is there a satisfactorily approximate
terminus a quo, and even here approximate means merely within the
limit of centuries.

Nevertheless, criteria fortunately are not lacking to enable one to
assign the general bulk of any one work to a certain period in the
literary development; and as these periods are, if not sharply, yet
plainly distinguishable, one is not in so desperate a case as he might
have expected to be, considering that it is impossible to date with
certainty any Hindu book or writer before the Christian era. For,
first, there exists a difference in language, demarcating the most
important periods; and, secondly, the development of the literature
has been upon such lines that it is easy to say, from content and
method of treatment, whether a given class of writings is a product of
the Vedic, early Brahmanic, or late Brahmanic epochs. Usually, indeed,
one is unable to tell whether a later Upanishad was made first in the
early or late Brahmanic period, but it is known that the Upanishads,
as a whole, _i.e._, the literary form and philosophical material which
characterize Upanishads, were earlier than the latest Brahmanic period
and subsequent to the early Brahmanic period; that they arose at the
close of the latter and before the rise of the former. So the
Br[=a]hmanas, as a whole, are subsequent to the Vedic age, although
some of the Vedic hymns appear to have been made up in the same period
with that of the early Br[=a]hmanas. Again, the Pur[=a]nas can be
placed with safety after the late Brahmanic age; and, consequently,
subsequent to the Upanishads, although it is probable that many
Upanishads were written after the first Pur[=a]nas. The general
compass of this enormous literature is from an indefinite antiquity to
about 1500 A.D. A liberal margin of possible error must be allowed in
the assumption of any specific dates. The received opinion is that
the Rig Veda goes back to about 2000 B.C., yet are some scholars
inclined rather to accept 3000 B.C. as the time that represents this
era. Weber, in his _Lectures on Sanskrit Literature_ (p. 7), rightly
says that to seek for an exact date is fruitless labor; while Whitney
compares Hindu dates to ninepins--set up only to be bowled down again.
Schroeder, in his _Indiens Literatur und Cultur_, suggests that the
prior limit may be "a few centuries earlier than 1500," agreeing with
Weber's preferr