Dates of written Rgveda

[Krishna Kalale]

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-----Original Message-----
From:   Swaminathan Madhuresan [SMTP:smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM]
Sent:   Friday, March 10, 2000 8:25 AM
To:     INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK
Subject:        Re: Dates of written Rgveda

Dr. Farmer,

Generally, Indologists date the Rig Veda to around 1200 BCE.
After the Indus valley culture declined around 1700 BCE, Aryan
migrations tookplace spreading Indo-Iranian language into India.
Sanskrit developed out of it. In the Indus culture, Dravidian, not Sanskrit,
was the high language. See A. Parpola, Deciphering the Indus script,
Cambridge.

Of course, Manu smrthi was written after 3rd cent. BCE giving
supremacy to Varnashrama system.

Regards,
SM


--- Steve Farmer <saf at SAFARMER.COM> wrote:
> George Thompson writes, concerning a post of mine questioning the date
> that Michael Witzel gives for the first written Rgveda:
>
> > So here we go again.  Another truly NAIVE challenge from someone who, in
> all
> > ignorance, asserts that *Vedicists* are naive.
> >
> > In fact, Vedicists have long wrestled with this problem.  It is
> > understandable that you and other comparatists might be skeptical about the
> > large claims that are made for the fidelity of Vedic oral tradition.  But
> if
> > you did your homework you would know:
> >
> > that in a *very* large Vedic literature there is *not one* reference to
> > writing anywhere;
> >
> > that there is no solid evidence for writing in the Indan sub-continent
> before
> > the 3rd cent. BCE [whereas, if we are willing to overcome reasonable doubt,
> > we *might* be able to push that date back to the 6th cent. BCE -- in any
> > case, by this date the Vedic period is essentially over, or about to end];
> >
> > that the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of
> > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of  the
> > traditional texts;
> >
> > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably
> > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended
> > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means;
>
> It wasn't my intention to be impolite. If I seemed so, please except my
> sincere apologies. Nevertheless, my scholarly questions remain. Here they
> are, rephrased, I hope, less polemically:
>
> 1. Is there indeed a consensus among Vedicists that the Rgveda was passed
> on for as much as two millennia through "near-perfect ORAL transmission"
> (to quote Michael Witzel) until it "was first written down c. 1000 CE"? If
> true, this would be a unique situation in premodern thought; that is the
> source of my skepticism.
>
> 2. How is this consensus view -- if there *is* indeed a consensus --
> reconciled with repeated suggestions in the Laws of Manu that the Vedas
> were utilized at least at some point in antiquity in literate form? This
> is a serious question that requires a evidential response. Are there
> textual strata in the Laws of Manu that date from as late as 1000 CE,
> providing conservative Vedicists with an easy way out of the problem? If
> not, how do they face this and similar counterevidence?
>
> 3. The obvious signs of textual stratification in the received text of the
> Rgveda suggests that various hymns were repeatedly *reshaped* in early
> stages of the text's oral development. How, this being the case, do
> Indologists explain that the text in *later* oral periods remained
> unchanged for nearly two millennia? How *can* a textual canon be fixed
> over wide geographical and cultural regions in the absence of written
> exemplars? What makes the relationship between oral and written traditions
> in Vedic sources different from that found in every other premodern
> tradition?
>
> Thompson further writes:
>
> > the Vedic tradition developed, very early, a remarkable system of
> > mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission of  the
> > traditional texts
>
> Every premodern society that I've studied created its own elaborate
> systems of "mnemonic devices intended to assure the accurate transmission
> of the traditional texts" (think of the methods described in the West in
> the pseudo-Ciceronian Hortensius) -- and in every such society,
> nonetheless, traditions drifted conceptually in largely predictable ways.
> Much evidence on this topic has accumulated in dozens of studies of oral
> and early-literature traditions in Africa, the Mediterranean, Southeast
> Asia, China, Japan, and Mesoamerica. My own studies have uncovered cases
> of such drift involving supposedly "near-perfect" memorization of
> canonical texts in the premodern West. There is good evidence that
> neurobiological constraints on memory systems probably have something to
> do with this drift.
>
> If it is really true that premodern Vedic reciters, unlike those found in
> every other known premodern civilization, maintained "near-perfect ORAL
> transmission" over two millennia of a highly stratified compilation like
> the Rgvedas, Indologists should be prepared with a credible reason to
> explain India's uniqueness. Alternately, they should be able to point to
> other instances of "near-perfect transmission" in premodern societies
> outside India. (I'd be extremely interested in what evidence they try to
> cite.)
>
> Thompson also writes:
>
> > that the date of the RV, for linguistic reasons alone, cannot be reasonably
> > put very much *after* 1000 BCE, so that in fact there has been an extended
> > period of time during which it was transmitted purely by oral means
>
> You are missing the point elaborated in #3, above. Abundant internal
> evidence demonstrates that the received text of the Rgvedas is itself
> "layered" (stratified) -- just like virtually every other known Eurasian
> compilation from this level of antiquity. It would certainly be curious if
> the Rgveda in its *earliest* stages of oral development were continuously
> reshaped by processes of transmission and then, magically, in *later*
> stages it became "fixed" in the absence of written exemplars.
>
> Perhaps my questions are naive, as Thompson claims. But if that's the
> case, I'm sure that he can quickly point to evidence that demonstrates
> that. The use of such evidence would, of course, be much more effective
> than declarations ex cathedra.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Steve Farmer, Ph.D.
> http://www.safarmer.com/pico/abstract.html
>
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