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a rishi, or teacher, by whom, in Brahmanical phraseology, it was seen," that is, to whom it was revealed. For the names of these rishis we are indebted, except when incidentally mentioned in the hymns themselves, to an index of the contents of the Vedas, which also specifies the meter and the number of stanzas in each hymn. The Rig-Veda has 1017 hymns, and 10,417 stanzas (there is a difference of six or eight stanzas in different enumerations), the authorship of which is attributed to nearly 100 different rishis. Many of these hymns and parts of hymns appear in the three other Vedas, which are of a later date; indeed, the whole of the second or Sama-Veda has been found to have been taken from the first. The same is true of large portions of the contents of the Yajur and Atharva Vedas, so that these 1017 hymns of the Rig-Veda are regarded as constituting almost all of the original Vedic hymns. Some of their reputed authors are the subjects of legends in the later mythology, but many are not mentioned in other parts of Sanskrit literature.

In regard to the antiquity of these ancient writings, scholars are by no means agreed. Baron Bunsen thinks that some of the hymns were composed as long ago as B. C. 3000. Professor Whitney, who is probably the first Sanskrit scholar in Amer

ica, has expressed the opinion that they were written during the first half of the second millennium before Christ (B. C. 2000-1500). Professor Max Müller, who has nearly completed his most valuable edition of the Rig-Veda, thinks that their collection and arrangement in their present form took place at least as early as from the 12th to the 10th century before Christ, but that their composition occupied quite an indefinite period of, some centuries before. The late Professor Wilson, who was, I believe, regarded as the best Sanskrit scholar in England, thought Müller's date too recent by some two or three centuries. Ritter supposes they were composed or collected from 1600 to 1400 B. C. The most modern date I recollect to have seen is from 1000 to 1200 B. C. In each case, some centuries previous are allowed for their composition.

My own opinion, if I may be allowed to express one, after the eminent scholars just named, is, that the collection and arrangement of these hymns, as we now have them in the Rig-Veda Sanhita, was made as early as the 15th or 16th century before Christ, and that the composition of the earliest of them may have been some five centuries previous, carrying it back to about the time of Abraham. This opinion is based partly on the style of the language, which is simple and archaic, and had

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become in a measure obsolete when the next portion of the Vedic literature (the Brahmanas) were written. The meters also are archaic, and unknown in later versification, and in the later of the hymns reference is made to the earlier ones as already ancient. Now, since the period of the Brahmana must, on separate grounds, be made to begin at least as early as B. C. 1000, it seems necessary to date the collection and arrangement of the hymns two or three centuries earlier, and their composition at least as many more.

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Again, there is appended to these collections of hymns a tract on astronomy the Iyotisha, the object of which is to prescribe rules for regulating the time of the sacrifices prescribed in the hymns. In this treatise there is a record of the places of the solstitial points at the time. These places are about twenty-four degrees east of those they occupied at the time when the modern Hindu sphere was fixed, viz., Mesha, in the 1st of Aries, which was about A. D. 500. Calculating from the known rate of the precession of the equinoxes, we are carried back to the early part of the twelfth century before Christ as the time when the recorded observation was made. And we are safe in assuming that so much knowledge of astronomy as is disclosed in this observation and record, and in the complicated rules

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derived from them for regulating the times of the sacrifices, requires at least a period of several centuries for its growth. Such a system of rites, so regulated, with its corresponding literature, is not the product of one century, or of two or three. And this view is strengthened by the fact that there are, in connection with Hindu astronomical works,.intimations that at the time the modern Hindu sphere was fixed at the 1st degree of Aries, A. D. 500, the equinoxes had fallen back twenty-seven degrees from the places they occupied when first observed by their ancient astronomers. This brings the time of those first observations into the middle of the fifteenth century before the Christian era. It should, however, in fairness, be added, that some Sanskrit scholars do not attach so much importance to this Iyotisha record as is implied in the foregoing remarks, since it is assumed that in the absence of suitable astronomical instruments, it was not possible for the Hindus to make their observations with a sufficient degree of accuracy to warrant these definite results.

Our conclusion, then, from a careful survey of the Sanskrit language and literature, is the same as from that of the other ancient peoples of the East. The oldest Hindu writings, and the earliest astronomical observation on record, can not be proved

to have had an earlier date than the fourteenth or fifteenth century before Christ, though a few hundred more may be conceded as probable. The oldest astronomical treatise, which has been regarded as an important witness against the Bible, is proved incontrovertibly to have been composed some four or five centuries after Christ. And as the work of bringing to light the ancient literature of the Brahmas proceeds, the tendency among European scholars is to bring it within more and more modern limits. This tendency to modernize is sometimes, doubtless, suffered to proceed too far. But however this may be, this fact may be regarded as established, viz., that the ancient literature of India affords no materials for disproving the truthfulness of the Bible; on the contrary, it contains much that .corroborates the claims of the sacred volume to a divine authenticity.

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