New Light on The Date of The Rgveda

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The new evidence brought out in this work is :
(1) The date of the Birth Rama on the basis of the Ramayana statement that at his birth the season was winter and the month was Chaitra both marking the end of the year
(2) The mention of Rashis: Simha Mithuna Kanya and vrshabha in the Rgveda, with the corresponding seasons thus in the corresponding seasons thus indicating the age in which it was composed.
(3) The bearing of archaeology on the date of the Bharata war, the Ramayana events and the life depicted in the Rgveda.

The usual objection to assigning the period 3000B.C. to 500B.C. to the composition of the Vedangas is that the language of these works is grammatically indistinguishable from classical Sanskrit as were See it in Bhasa; the difference is more of style than of grammatical structure. “can a language thus remain unchanged for 3000 years?” it asked. A further complication is that our investigations lead use assign the earliest portion of the Ramayana, particularly the one stating that Ram was born on chaitra shuddha Navami at the close of winter, to about 3700 B.C.; and the earliest portion of the Mahabharata; particularly the one asserting the beginning of Uttarayana; to a date near about that of the Bharata war i.e.3101 B.C. Since the latest portions of these works are post Buddhist, this amounts to asserting that these works were being composed for about 3000 years and yet their language remained grammatically identical.

This is a formidable difficulty if we assume that all these works have been handed down to us exactly in the form in which they were first compose. The hymns of the Rgveda were standardized by 3000B.C.When Vyasa compiled them in book-form But the other literature was not standardized, it was handed down mostly by oral tradition which did not hesitate to change it to bring it in line with contemporary language. It is only in the days Panini and his preceding great grammarians that classical Sanskrit was standardized, sometime around 1000 B.C. when Sanskrit became the spoken language only of the elite. We must therefore suppose that these works assumed their present linguistic form around this date, though the original works are older by thousands of years.

The author, Dr. N.R. Waradpande, whose biodata has been given within, began taking in Vedic studies in the forties of this century. He found to his utter surprise that many things like the Aryan invasion and the North Pole which were alleged to be referred to in that the western scholars and their absence there. His feeling that the Western schoolmarms and their Indian disciples are very misleading guides about the Vedic age, went on becoming deeper with his progress in vedic age, went on becoming deeper with his progress in Vedic studies and he resolved to study the Vedas by critically examining all that is hither to said about them by famous writers. The outcome of this study was his celebrate book: “ Aryan Invasion: a Myth”.

The researchers contained in the present monograph were intended to be a part of this book, but the author felt that he needs to have a second critical look at his findings with the help of Astronomers before publishing them. This he has been doing for the last four years. In 1992 December these researches were placed before the scholars in Nagpur in the form of a research monograph. There were numerous discussions after that and now the author feels that the findings can be placed before a wider audience of scholars in the world at large.

The Sanskrit Bhasha Pracharini Sabha has now embarked on a programmed of research and wishes to bring out many such monographs. The second in theseries will be “The Rgvedic Soma” by the same author. In this monograph the author has proved that the Soma hymns in the Rgvea have a double meaning, one applicable to the moon and the other to the drink which was none other than the familiar hemp, which is still a religious drink in Indian and attempts of western scholars to identify it with some exotic plant like the fly-agaric are like their attempts to search for the original home of the Aryans outside India.

Dating of the Rgveda is crucial not only for Indian history, but also for the history of the world since the roots in the Rgveda language are found in thousands, in the European languages. There have been umpteen attempts for estimating the date of the Rgveda but few of them are free from extra historical biases. There is a group of Indian who believe that the Vedas are divine and have something to do with creation of the world. They are not therefore satisfied unless one talks in term of at least hundreds of thousands of years in dating the Rgveda. On the other hand the European scholars are mortally afraid of assigning any date any date to the Rgveda that goes thousand of years beyond in antiquity to the earliest forms of Greek or any European language, since that would expose them to the dager of admitting that the common roots in the Indian and European language are derivable from vedic sanskrit and there is no need to postulate any imaginary “ Indo-European” language.

The present work does not belong to any of the above categories. Its sole motive is to fix the date of the Rgveda without being guided by any extraneous considerations.

The present worked also differs from the other in that it tries to consider and harmonize evidence from all the field, linguistic, literary, astronomical and archaeological, I have no knowledge of any such attempt by any one else.

To give an example, famous Sanskrit scholars like the late V.V. Mirashi and Laxmana Shasti Joshi just dismiss the conclusive argument of Deexit on the krittikas not deviating form the east, on the basis of the similarity of the language of the Brahmanas and Bhasa. It has to be conceded that the linguistic argument can not be ignored, but it is deplorable that these scholars and their European mentors feel that Deexits far more conclusive argument can just be pushed under the carpet. I have tried to avoid this tendency.

The new evidence brought out in this work is (1) The date of the Birth of Rama on the basis of the Ramayana statement that at his birth the season was winter and the month was chaitra, both marking the end of the year (2) the mention of the rasis: simha, mithuna, kanya and vrshabha, in the Rgveda with the corresponding seasons, thus indicating the age in which it was composed. (3) The bearing of archaeology on the date of the bharat war, the Ramayana events and the life depicted Rgveda.

On the basis of the above evidence the date of the Rgveda goes back to 4000 B.C.

It is not denied that the evidence from the beds of sarasvati may push the date back to 8000 B.C. since 7/95/1 clearly mentions that the river Sarasvati meets the ocean. The ;ocean going bed of the Sarasvati, according to the Indian Arid Zone research Institute dates back to 8000 B.C.

Objection has been raised against this by Shri P.N. Fadake on the groud that the same verse contains a reference to ayas i.e. copper in the first line, and the copper finds in India are not older than 4000 B.C. But this is an argument from absence, copper was discovered in 8000 B.C. according to a not in the Visvakosha, the Vedics had both land and sea contacts with the outside world, and even if the 8000 B.C. copper was not discovered on Indian soil, it should not have taken thousands of year to reach India.

The conclusion from the beds of Sarasvati is corroborated by K.D. Abhyankar’s finding that the Rgveda mention the winter-solstice in the Ashvani constellation. Abhyankar’s interpretations are reasonable , and the mention of the winter-solstice in Ashvini can be regarded as hinted at in the Rgveda. But his elaborate Ashvini calendar may not have been in vogue as the references are not very explicit on the point.

Thus though on the basis of other evidence the earliest period of the Rgveda can be taken back to 800 B.C., I have not discussed such evidence and other pieces of evidence seeking to pull down the antiquity of the Vedas in the following work, because that would be a fit subject only for a magnum opus and not for lecture. I have confined myself to the new evidence discovered by myself and answered the objections to it.

I have received commendable help from B.W. Deshpande my nephew and retired chief Engineer of Bhilai in the astronomical, calculations mention in this paper. Shr despande’s talent is multisided and Astronomy is one of his favorite activities.

Thanks are also due to Shri. P.V. Holay noted Astronomer of Nagpur to whom I read out the astronomical portion of this paper and benefited by his comments.