Timeline of Hindu texts

Hindu scriptures are traditionally classified into two parts: śruti, meaning "what has been heard" (originally transmitted orally) and Smriti, meaning "what has been retained or remembered" (originally written, and attributed to individual authors). The Vedas are classified under śruti.

It is quite clear that we cannot fix a terminum a quo, whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years BC, no power on earth will ever determine. ~ Max Muller

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · From Hindu texts · See also · External links

B

• Max Muller's dating of the Veda illustrates the arbitrariness involved in the production of theories that are then propagated as "facts" in generations of schoolbooks.
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. page 307

G

• The whole foundation of Mueller's date [for the Rigveda] rests on the authority of Somadeva, the author of 'an Ocean of (or rather for) the River of Stories' who narrated his tales in the twelfth century after Christ. Somadeva, I am satisfied, would not be a little surprised to learn that 'a European point of view" raises a 'ghost story' of his to the dignity of an historical document.
  Neither is there a single reason to account for his allotting 200 years to the first of his periods, nor for his doubling this amount of time in the case of the Sutra period.
  • Theodore Goldstucker, quoted in Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (1980). Bias in Indian historiography. Delhi: D.K. Publications. p 48, also in in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12
  • Goldstucker, Theodore. [1860] 1965. Panini. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office. [1]

K

• The period between the arrival of the Indo-Aryan in the Indian subcontinent and the composition of the oldest Vedic hymns must have been much longer than was previously thought.
  • Kuiper, F. B. J. 1967. “The Genesis of a Linguistic Area”, Indo-Iranian Journal 10.2-3: 81-102. (Rpt. in International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 3.1 [1974]: 135-153.) Kuiper (1967: 97)
  • quoted in Levitt, S. H. (2012). Vedic-ancient Mesopotamian interconnections and the dating of the Indian tradition. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 93, 137-192.

L

• It was once said that dates in Indian studies are like bowling pins, set up only to be knocked down later. I do not think that this ought to stop us from making suggestions.
  • S. H. Levitt, "Vedic–Ancient Mesopotamian Interconnections and the Dating of the Indian Tradition", Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 93 (2012), pp. 137-192

M

• I need hardly say that I agree with almost every word of my critics. I have repeatedly dwelt on the merely hypothetical character of the dates which I ventured to assign to the first three periods of Vedic literature. All I have claimed for them has been that they are minimum dates, and that the literary productions of each period which either still exist or which formerly existed, could hardly be accounted for within shorter limits of time than those suggested.
  • Max Muller. Preface to the text of the Rigveda, Vol.4, p.xiii. [2], quoted in Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

P

• These dates Mueller later insisted were minimum dates only, and latterly there has been a sort of tacit agreement... to date the composition of the Rigveda somewhere about 1400-1500 BC, but without any absolutely conclusive evidence.
  • Stuart Piggott. Prehistoric India. Quoted from B.B. Lal in : Indian History and Culture Society., Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (2012). Bias in Indian historiography. p.8

• That age [of the Rigveda] is not known with even an approximate degree of certainty.
  • A.D. Pusalker , The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. I: The Vedic Age edited by R.C. Majumdar, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Publications, Mumbai, 6th edition 1996. quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993)

V

• All attempts to date the Vedic literature on linguistic grounds have failed miserably for the simple reason that (a) the conclusions of comparative philology are often speculative and (b) no one has yet suceeded in showing how much change should take place in a language in a given period.
  • K.C. Verma, Mahabharata: Myth and Reality-Differing Views (p.99), Quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993), and quoted at Proof of Vedic culture's global existence