Now the antiquity of the Vedas, as inferred from the archaic character of their language, has been shaken by the discovery of the structure of the Persepolitan dialect of the arrow-headed inscriptions. It approaches that of the Vedas; being, in some points, older than the Sanskrit of Menu. Yet its date is less than 500, B.C. Again, the Pali is less archaic than the Sanskrit; yet the[168] Pali is the language of the oldest inscriptions in India, indeed, of the oldest Indian records of any sort, with a definite date.
One of the few cases where the phenomena of rate have been studied with due attention, is in the evolution of the three languages of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden out of the Icelandic. What does this tell us? The last has altered so slowly that a modern Icelander can read the oldest works of his language. In Sweden, however, the speech has altered. So it has in Denmark; whilst both these languages are unintelligible to the Icelander, and vice versâ. As to their respective changes, Petersen shows that the Danish was always about a hundred years forwarder than the Swedish, having attained that point at (say) 1200, which the Swedish did not reach till 1300. Both, however, changed; and that, at a uniform rate; the Danish having, as it were, the start of a century. The Norwegian, however, comported itself differently. Until the Reformation it hardly changed at all; less than the stationary Icelandic itself. Fifty years, however, of sudden and rapid transformation brought it, at once, to the stage which the Danish had been three hundred years in reaching. How many times must the observation of such phenomena be multiplied before we can strike an average as to the rate of change in languages, creeds, and polities?[169]
Again—it is by no means certain that the Institutes and the Vedas represent a contemporary state of things. All doctrinal writings contain something appertaining to a period older than that of their composition.
Lastly,—the proof that all the writings in question belong to the same linear series, and represent the growth of the same phenomena in the same place is deficient. The Ægyptologist believes that contemporary kings are mistaken for successive ones; the philologist, that difference of dialects simulates a difference of age. Doubts of a more specific nature dawn upon us when we attempt to realize the alphabet in which an Indian MS. of even only eight hundred years B.C., was written. No Indian MS. is fifteen hundred years old; no inscription older than Alexander's time. Nevertheless,—though I write upon this subject with diffidence—the Devanagari characters of the Sanskrit MSS. can be deduced from the alphabet of the inscriptions; whilst these inscriptions themselves approach the alphabets of the Semitic character in proportion to their antiquity: so that the oldest alphabet of the Vedas is referable to that of the inscriptions, and that of the inscriptions betrays an origin external to India. Its introduction may be very early; nevertheless its epoch must be investigated with a full recognition of the[170] comparatively modern date of even the earliest alphabets of Persia, and the parts westward; early as compared with such a date as 1400, B.C., the accredited epoch of the Vedas; an epoch, perhaps, a thousand years too early.
Nevertheless, the existence of an alphabet, an architecture, a coinage, and an algebra at a period which no scepticism puts much later than 250, B.C., is so undoubted, that they may pass as ethnological facts, i.e., facts sufficiently true to be not merely admitted with what is called an otiose belief, but to be classed with the most unexceptionable data of history, and to be used as effects from which we may argue backwards—more ethnologico—to their antecedent causes; the appreciation of these requiring a philosophy and an induction of its own.
We cannot detract from the antiquity of Indian civilization without impugning its indigenous origin, nor doubt this without stirring the question as to the countries from which it was introduced. These have been Persia, Assyria, Egypt, and Greece; the introduction being direct or indirect as the case might be.
In this way are contrasted the views of the general ethnologist, with those of the special orientalist, in respect to the great and difficult question of Indian antiquity. Yet, how far does the scepticism of the former affect our views concerning[171] the descent of the Hindús, the Mahrattas, the Bengali, and those other populations, to the languages whereof they applied? Not much. Whichever way we decide, the population may still be Tamulian; only, in case we make the language Sanskritic, it is Tamulian in the same way as the Cornish are Welsh; i.e., Tamulian with a change of tongue.
The doubts, too, as to the antiquity of the Sanskrit literature unsettle but little. They merely make the introduction of certain foreign elements some centuries later.
Whatever may be the oldest of the great Hindú creeds, that of the Sikhs is the newest. Its founder, Nanuk, in the fifteenth century, was a contemplative enthusiast; his successor, Govind, a zealous man of action; himself succeeded by similar gúrús, or priests, who eventually, by means of fanaticism, organization, and union with the state raised the power of the Khalsa to the formidable height from which it has so lately fallen. Truth is the great abstraction of the Sikh creeds; and the extent to which it is at once intolerant and eclectic may be seen from the following extracts.[48] They certainly present the doctrine in a favourable light.