Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/34

The Religion of the Veda
themselves were never very keen about canonicity;
quasi-Vedic books, or, as we should say, Pseudo-
Vedic books were composed at a very late date,
when the various and peculiar sources of early in-
spiration had dried up; they kept pouring new, mostly
sour wine into the old skins. The huge Concordance
of the Vedas, which it has been my fate to publish
this year (1906), absorbs about 120 texts more or
less Vedic.
18
It is truly humiliating to students of ancient India
to have to answer the inevitable question as to the
age of the Veda with a meek, "We don't know." As
regards their texture, the books of the Veda claim
great antiquity with no uncertain voice. One should
like to see this intrinsically archaic quality held up
by actual dates; those same, almost fabulous, yet per-
fectly authentic dates that are being bandied about
in the ancient history of Assyria, Babylonia, and
Egypt. The late Professor William D. Whitney left
behind the witty saying that Hindu dates are merely
ten-pins set up to be bowled down again. This is
not altogether so. Buddha died 477 B.C. Alexander
invaded India in 326 B.C. In the year 315 B.C.
Candragupta, or Sandrakottos, "Alexander-Killer,"
as Greek writers ominously mouthed over his name,
led a successful revolt against Alexander's prefects
and established the Maurya dynasty in Pătaliputra,