compass of this enormous literature is from an indefinite antiquity to
about 1500 A.D. A liberal margin of possible error must be allowed in
the assumption of any specific dates. The received opinion is that
the Rig Veda goes back to about 2000 B.C., yet are some scholars
inclined rather to accept 3000 B.C. as the time that represents this
era. Weber, in his _Lectures on Sanskrit Literature_ (p. 7), rightly
says that to seek for an exact date is fruitless labor; while Whitney
compares Hindu dates to ninepins--set up only to be bowled down again.
Schroeder, in his _Indiens Literatur und Cultur_, suggests that the
prior limit may be "a few centuries earlier than 1500," agreeing with
Weber's preferred reckoning; but Whitney, Grassmann, and Benfey
provisionally assume 2000 B.C. as the starting point of Hindu
literature. The lowest possible limit for this event Müller now places
at about 1500, which is recognized as a very cautious view; most
scholars thinking that Müller's estimate gives too little time for the
development of the literary periods, which, in their opinion, require,
linguistically and otherwise, a greater number of years. Brunnhofer
more recently has suggested 2800 B.C. as the terminus; while the last
writers on the subject (Tilak and Jacobi) claim to have discovered
that the period from 3500 to 2500 represents the Vedic age. Their
conclusions, however, are not very convincing, and have been disputed
vigorously.[4] Without the hope of persuading such scholars as are
wedded to a terminus of three or four thousand years ago that we are
right, we add, in all deference to others, our own opinion on this
vexed question. Buddhism gives the first semblance of a date in Hindu
literature. Buddha lived in the sixth century, and died probably about
480, possibly (Westergaard's extreme opinion) as late as 368.[5]
Before this time arise the S[=u]tras, back of which lie the earliest
Upanishads, the bulk of the Br[=a]hmanas, and all the Vedic poems. Now
it is probable that the Brahmanic literature itself extends to the