Development of Hinduism

Author(s): M M Ninan
Publisher: M M Ninan

Page 45

2. DATES OF VEDAS
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm
The Vedas
There are four Vedas, the Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda. The Vedas are the primary texts of Hinduism. They also had a vast influence on Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The Rig Veda, the oldest of the four Vedas, was composed about 1500 B.C., and codified about 600 B.C. It is unknown when it was finally comitted to writing, but this probably was at some point after 300 B.C.
"Based on internal evidence (philological and linguistic), the Rigveda was composed roughly between 1700-1100 BCE (the early Vedic period) in the Punjab (Sapta Sindhu) region of the Indian subcontinent." Notice that it is talking about supposed composition based on internal references. Evidently if something is referred to in the content to have happened, it must have happened before the composition. How long after the event is not really possible to say. It is supposed to be transmitted orally without any change from 1700 to 200 BC over a period of 1500 years, orally, by word of mouth! At the same time we have traditions which says that most of the other parts of Vedas has disappeared. Yet we are told that what survived survived without distortion or error!! It certainly belies "self evident means of knowledge."
Yet it has been written down. The reason?
http://www.gurjari.net/ico/Mystica/html/veda.htm
"It is believed that the Vedas were orally revealed by Brahma to certain sages, who heard them and passed them down in an oral tradition. They were not written down; in fact this was prohibited. The Mahabharata denounces it and Kumarila Bhatta held that by reading the Vedas, their spiritual significance was nullified. As a result of this, of the 100,000 verses that is believed to have existed in the Dvapara Yuga, most were either lost or altered by the beginning of the Kali Yuga."
So it did undergo alteration and loss. If writing down was the solution to avoid that why was it not done earlier? If Kumarila Bhatta was right, did it nullify the spiritual significance of the Vedas now? The reason for writing down has to be obtained for reasons other than what the sages are ready to give. The nomadic people whose oral tradition was this veda did not have any knowledge of writing. Even today we have large number of dialects which do not have any scripts.