​How do we reconcile differences between academic and traditional dating of the Vedas?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Regarding the dating of the Vedas, how do we understand the difference between what the tradition tells us and what the modern academic scholars tell us? There is a difference between the knowledge and the knowledge put in written form. So, what academic scholars can find out is the oldest manuscript which they have, or then we will find out, okay, this particular word or this particular book is written in this kind of Sanskrit.
And they may say this Sanskrit existed at this particular point in history. And therefore, this is the date of this book. Usually, the way they date it is largely through inference.
If they have manuscript, they try to build a manuscript. They look at the language, they try to date this particular Sanskrit of this particular date. Or third is that they look at other references.
Where is this book referred to? Is it the temple architecture? Or this book is talked about in this other book? And fourth is they look at the internal content. Okay, this talks about this Chola dynasty. Chola dynasty existed in this time, therefore, this must have been after Chola dynasty, something like that.
So, they do a lot of inferences. And often those inferences are based on other things which themselves may not be very reliable. But even if their inferences are valid, all that they can arrive at is the date when the knowledge was put in the written form at that particular time.
But there is always been a very vibrant oral tradition in addition to the written tradition. So, the Amrit Maran searching for Vedic India gives the example. Suppose, you are trying to find out the letter, a particular letter contains somebody is on a mystery train to solve a mystery and they are trying to find a particular letter.
And they find the envelope that contained the letter. Finding the envelope is not the same as finding the letter. It is a similar example he gives basically.
So, like that, what we may, what academic scholars find is at best when that knowledge appeared in the textual form. But prior to that, it may well have existed for a long time in oral tradition. That is why we do not have to make the dating of the Vedas a major issue.
The point is, as they put it down into writing, but that does not mean that the manuscripts that he wrote, they are going to exist 5000 years. Manuscripts were further repeated, further repeated and his original manuscript may well have been lost. So, and that is why the, when the Vedas are written is not as important as what is written in the Vedas, what is the essential message.
And the more, if the more academicians are doing research, the more quite often they end up pre-dating it, pre-dating it. They thought, oh, this was at this time, but they found this reference also. So, earlier they used to think that the Bhagavatam is in the 10th century, 11th century, that is when it came about.
But now they are saying, oh, but this reference also, this reference also, it is in 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century, 5th century also. So, often the dating goes backward. So, we do not have to get too much caught in this whole thing.
If you have some specific interest in the subject, reading, searching for Vedic India, there is a chapter on making a changing history. It is a very good chapter to explain the whole process of how dates are assigned and how extremely, even from the point of view of common sense and even from the point of view of historiography, how it is a very speculative process. We do not have to get too caught in that.