[Advaita-l] oldest text considering everyone as oneself

[Ram Garib]

Sylvain wrote:

> When these divine revelations, cited here after by
> Krunal, were put to pen 
> and paper ?

Age of vedas is a passionately debated issue among
indologists and devout hindus. As you must have known
by now that devout hindus consider vedas to be
existent since beginning. As far as the indologists
group is concerned, conjectures about origin of vedas
first started in 19th century led by romantic
historians like Max Muller. However credit for
starting a systemmatic attempt to study the vedic
history goes generally to D N Jha and Koffmann.

According to this latter view vedas were 'compiled'
between 2500 BCE to 500 BCE. The earliest part of the
vedas are considered contemporary to the evolution of
language itself. The structure of the language here is
more atomic than 'Ipuwer Papirus' which is placed 1800
BCE. That makes the earliest Riks older than 1800 BCE.
On the other end of the range Rigveda is considered
fully in place by 1500 BCE (time of Aryan migration to
India: another fiercely contested issue)based on
absense of cross reference to Zoroastrian scripture
Zend Avesta in later vedas. (Few hindus and
zoroastrians realize that at many places it is
possible to produce entire Riks by mere phonetic
substitution in Zend Avesta and vice versa. This has
been attempted by Charles Braden and other scholars of
Indo-Persian heritage.) As far as the later vedas are
concerned, they are considered linguistically more
complex. Some additions are considered as new as 500
BCE, but they seem to be mainly borrowings from
earlier vedas for procedural convenience during
sacrifice. The content itself is considered between
1500 BCE and 1000 BCE. It may also be of interest to
note that in the times of Buddha (600 BCE), vedas were
already considered very ancient and 'beginningless'.

With regards,
Ram Garib


		
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