2 PERPETUITY OF THE VEDA

THE NAME Veda, the proper meaning of which has just been explained, is applied in a general way to all the basic scriptures of the Hindu tradition; these are divided into four collections known respectively as the Rig-Veda the Yajur-Veda, the Sāma-Veda and the Atharva-Veda. The question of the date when these collections were composed is one of those that worry orientalists the most, and they have never managed to agree on its solution, even when confining themselves to a very approximate computation of their antiquity.

Here as everywhere else may be observed the usual tendency to refer everything to a period as little remote in time as possible, and likewise to contest the authenticity of such and such parts of the traditional writings, the whole argument being based on a minute analysis of texts, accompanied by dissertations that are as endless as they are superfluous on the use of a word or of a certain grammatical form. These are in fact the habitual preoccupations of orientalists, and the general purpose, in the minds of those who occupy themselves with such things, is to show that the text under discussion is not as old as was believed, that it cannot be the work of the author to whom it had hitherto been ascribed (if indeed it ever had an author), or at least that it has been 'interpolated' or has suffered some alteration or other at a comparatively recent date; anyone acquainted with the products of 'biblical criticism' can form a clear enough idea of the nature of these proceedings. It is hardly surprising that researches undertaken in such a spirit only lead to the piling up of volumes of tedious discussions, and that the pitiful results of this undermining 'criticism', when they come to the knowledge of Easterners, contribute substantially to inspiring them with a contempt for the West. In fact, it is always questions of principle that escape the orientalists, and as it is precisely this knowledge which is essential to a proper understanding (seeing that everything else is derived from it and should logically be deduced from it), these scholars are led to neglect the one essential thing through their inability to grasp its primary importance; the consequence is that they lose their way hopelessly in a maze of the most insignificant details or in a tangle of quite arbitrary theorizing.

The question of the date when the different portions of the Veda may have been composed appears to be truly insoluble; it is not however a matter of any real importance because, prior to the more or less distant epoch when the text was written down for the first time, it is necessary to consider a period of oral transmission of indeterminate length, as we have already pointed out. It is probable that the origin of writing in India in fact dates from considerably earlier than is usually admitted; furthermore, it is most unlikely that the Sanskrit characters have been derived from a Phoenician alphabet, which they resemble neither in shape nor arrangement. However that may be, one thing is certain, namely that nothing more than an ordering and final codifying of pre-existing traditional texts is to be seen in the work attributed to Vyāsa, a name which in reality does not refer to an historical person, still less to a 'myth', but denotes an intellectual collectivity, as we mentioned before. This being the case, the determining of the epoch of Vyāsa, even admitting that such a thing were possible, is only of interest as a simple historical fact, devoid of any doctrinal implication; moreover, it is obvious that this epoch may comprise a period of several centuries, or may even never have been completed, so that the question of its starting-point alone is open to discussion; this however does not mean that it can of necessity be answered, least of all by resorting to the methods favored by Western scholarship.

The preceding oral transmission is often indicated in a text, though without the addition of any chronological data, by what is called the vansha or traditional filiation; this is the case, for example, in most of the Upanishads. As regards the origin, however, it is always necessary to refer back to a direct inspiration, likewise implied in the vansha, for here there is no question of an individual work; it makes little difference that the tradition has been expressed or formulated by such and such an individual, for this does not make him its author, given that the tradition belongs essentially to the supra-individual order. That is why the origin of the Veda is said to be apaurushēya or 'non-human': historical circumstances exert no more influence on the essence of the doctrine than any other contingent factor, since it is endowed with an immutable and entirely timeless character, and it is moreover clear that the inspiration just referred to can manifest itself at any period. Perhaps the only difficulty here is to get Westerners to accept the theory of inspiration and especially to make them understand that this theory is neither mystical nor psychological, but can only be purely metaphysical; to pursue this question would however necessitate developments which do not fit in with our present scheme. These few explanations should suffice to give at least some idea of what the Hindus mean when they speak of the perpetuity of the Veda. From another point of view this doctrine is also correlated with the cosmological theory of the primordial place of sound among the sensory qualities, though we cannot undertake to expound this theory here; this last point may provide a clue to the fact that even after the adoption of writing the oral transmission of the doctrine has always continued to play a preponderant part in India.Since the Veda represents traditional knowledge unqualified, it therefore constitutes the principle and common basis of all the more or less secondary and derived branches of the doctrine; and even in their case the question of chronological development is of small importance. The tradition has to be considered in its entirety, and there is no point in asking which part of it is or is not primitive, since we are dealing with a perfectly coherent whole (which does not mean a systematic whole), and since all the points of view included in it can be considered simultaneously just as well as successively; consequently it is of no great interest to ascertain the historical order in which they were actually unfolded. Indeed, such a proceeding is all the less interesting because one can do no more than trace the actual development of the points of view in question as formulated in those works that are available to us; once one has learned to look beyond texts and has begun to penetrate further into the nature of things, one is bound to recognize that the various points of view have always been conceived as co-existing simultaneously in the unity of their principle; that is why a traditional text is capable of manifold interpretations or applications corresponding to these different points of view. It is not possible to assign a definite author to this or that portion of the doctrine any more than to the Vedic texts themselves, in which the doctrine in its entirety is contained synthetically, at least insofar as it is capable of expression; and if such and such a known author or commentator has expounded a certain more or less special point, that certainly does not imply that no one else had done so before him, and still less that no one had previously thought about it, even if until then it had not been formulated in a definite text.

Undoubtedly the exposition can be modified in its external form in order to be adapted to circumstances; but—and we can never repeat it too often—the foundation always remains absolutely identical and its outward modifications in no wise touch or affect the essence of the doctrine. These considerations, by raising the question to the plane of principles, serve to show the chief reasons for the embarrassment of the chronologists, as well as the pointlessness of their researches; and since these reasons, which they are unfortunately unaware of, are inherent in the very nature of things, it would assuredly be better if they resigned themselves to the inevitable and stopped debating insoluble questions; indeed, they would have no hesitation in following this course once they realized that these inquiries were without serious import: this is the point we were more particularly concerned to clear up in the present chapter, since it was not possible to treat the main theme fully and in its more profound aspects.