ed reckoning; but Whitney, Grassmann, and Benfey
provisionally assume 2000 B.C. as the starting point of Hindu
literature. The lowest possible limit for this event Mueller now places
at about 1500, which is recognized as a very cautious view; most
scholars thinking that Mueller's estimate gives too little time for the
development of the literary periods, which, in their opinion, require,
linguistically and otherwise, a greater number of years. Brunnhofer
more recently has suggested 2800 B.C. as the terminus; while the last
writers on the subject (Tilak and Jacobi) claim to have discovered
that the period from 3500 to 2500 represents the Vedic age. Their
conclusions, however, are not very convincing, and have been disputed
vigorously.[4] Without the hope of persuading such scholars as are
wedded to a terminus of three or four thousand years ago that we are
right, we add, in all deference to others, our own opinion on this
vexed question. Buddhism gives the first semblance of a date in Hindu
literature. Buddha lived in the sixth century, and died probably about
480, possibly (Westergaard's extreme opinion) as late as 368.[5]
Before this time arise the S[=u]tras, back of which lie the earliest
Upanishads, the bulk of the Br[=a]hmanas, and all the Vedic poems. Now
it is probable that the Brahmanic literature itself extends to the
time of Buddha and perhaps beyond it. For the rest of pre-Buddhistic
literature it seems to us incredible that it is necessary to require,
either from the point of view of linguistic or of social and religious
development, the enormous period of two thousand years. There are no
other grounds on which to base a reckoning except those of Jacobi and
his Hindu rival, who build on Vedic data results that hardly support
the superstructure they have erected. Jacobi's starting-point is from
a mock-serious hymn, which appears to be late and does not establish,
to whatever date it be assigned, the point of departure from which
proceeds his whole argument, as Whitney has shown very well. One is
driven back to the needs of a literature in respect of time sufficient
for it to mature. What changes take place in language, even with a
written literature, in the space of a few centuries, may be seen in
Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. No two thousand years are required
to bridge the linguistic extremes of the Vedic and classical Sanskrit
language.[6] But in content it will be seen that the flower of the
later lite