Moriz Winternitz

Moriz Winternitz (Horn, December 23, 1863 – Prague, January 9, 1937) was a scholar from Austria who began his Indology contributions working with Max Müller at the Oxford University.

Quotes

• We cannot explain the development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point.
  • M. Winternitz: History of Indian Literature (1907, reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1987), vol. 1, p.288.

• ...We shall probably have to date the beginning of this development to about 2000 or 2500 BC
  • Winternitz, Moritz, A History of Indian Literature°, vol. I, p. 288.in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• I, for my part, do not understand why some Western scholars are so anxious to make the hymns of the Rgveda and the civilisation which is reflected in them so very much later than the Babylonian and Egyptian culture.
  • Winternitz, Moritz, Some Problems of Indian Literature, Bharatiya Book Corporation; reprinted Delhi, 1977, pp. 3-4.in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• “Since more than 2000 years the poem of Rama has remained alive in India, and it continues to live in all strata and classes of folk. High and low, princes and peasants, landlords and artisans, princesses and shepherdesses, are well versed with the characters and stories of the great epic.”
  • (A History of Indian Literature, by Moriz Winternitz, volume 1, p. 455) quoted in Kishore, Kunal (2016). Ayodhyā revisited. ch. 12

• As Maurice Winternitz ... notes about the Vajrasûchî, a text attributed to the Brahmin-born monk Ashvaghosha: 'This work refutes the Brahmanical caste system very cuttingly. The author (...) seeks to prove from the Brahmanical texts themselves, by quotations from the Veda, the Mahâbhârata and the law book of Manu, how frail the claims of the Brahman caste are.'
  • M. Winternitz, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743, with quote from Maurice Winternitz (A History of Indian Literature, vol.2, p.265-66)

• From the mystical doctrines of the Upanishads, one current of thought may be traced to the mysticism of Persian Sufism, to the mystic, theosophic logos doctrine of the Neo-Platonics and the Alexandrian Christian Mystics, Eckhart and Tauler, and finally to the philosophy of the great German mystic of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer."
  • Winternitz, M. (Moriz) A history of Indian literature Calcutta University of Calcutta 1959 volume 1. p. 266 as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

• Almost a century ago, Winternitz ([1907] 1962) was refreshingly forthright about the lack of agreement regarding even the approximate date of the Veda: "It is a fact, and a fact which it is truly painful to admit, that the opinions of the best scholars differ, not to the extent of centuries, but to the extent of thousands of years, with regard to the age of the Rg Veda. Some lay down the year 1000 B.C. as the earliest limit for the Rg Vedic hymns, while others consider them to have originated between 3000 and 2500 B.C." (253).
  • Winternitz ([1907] 1962) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

• As Winternitz ([1907] 1962) points out, "it is at the fixing on these purely arbitrary dates that the untenable part of Max Muller's calculations begins" (255).
  • Winternitz ([1907] 1962) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

• Winternitz (1907), too, felt that since "all the external evidence fails, we are compelled to rely on the evidence out of the history of Indian literature itself, for the age of the Veda. . . . We cannot, however, explain the development of the whole of this great literature, if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 or 1500 B.C. as its starting point. We shall probably have to date the beginning of this development about 2000 or 2500 B.C." (310).
  • Winternitz (1907), in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

• It became a habit already censured by W. D. Whitney, to say that Max Muller had proved 1200-1000 B.C. as the date of the Rg Veda. It was only timidly that a few scholars, like L. von Schroeder ventured to go as far back as 1 500 or even 2000 B.C. And when all at once, H. Jacobi attempted to date Vedic literature back to the third millenary B.C. on the grounds of astrological calculations, scholars raised a great outcry at such heretical procedure. . . . Strange to say it has been quite forgotten on what a precarious footing stood the "opinion prevailing hitherto," which was so zealously defended.
  • (Winternitz [1907) 1962 256) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

• Winternitz (1907), too, hastened to note that "Max Muller himself did not really wish to say more than that such an interval at least must be assumed. . . . He always considered his date of 1200- 1000 B.C. only as a terminus ad quern" (293).
  • Winternitz (1907) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12