ymns to have been finished. This collection of hymns again
contains, by its own showing, ancient and modern hymns, the hymns of
the sons together with the hymns of their fathers and earlier
ancestors; so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200
to 1500 before our era, for the original composition of those simple
hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with
the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the
Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.

That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more
tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from
China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from
Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four
Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and
states that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the
seventh to the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts.
At the time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was
clearly on the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against
Brahmanism, and chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans
claimed, and which from the beginning were represented by them as based on
their revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human
attacks. Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state
religion of India under A_s_oka, the Constantine of India, in the middle of
the third century B.C. This A_s_oka was the third king of a new dynasty
founded by _K_andragupta, the well-known contemporary of Alexander and
Seleucus, about 315 B.C. The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and
it is under this dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number
of distinguished scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess,
such as _S_aunaka, Katyayana, A_s_valayana, and others. Their works, and
others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back
to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the Sutra
period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the
Brahma_n_as, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing
lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different
classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three
or four classes of priests, has its own Brahma_n_as and its