Hindu scriptures are classified
into two parts: Shruti ("śruti": what has been heard) and Smriti
("smṛti": what has been retained, remembered). The Vedas are
classified under "śruti". A commonplace opinion in South Asian
religious discourse suggests that, unlike other religions which claim the
authority of their scriptures as being delivered by a personal God or special
messengers of God, "Hindus" claim that the Vedas do not owe their
authority to anybody; rather, the Vedas themselves are the authority, being
identical with the eternal knowledge of God. This view, along with the
classificatory schema, is a product of the Pūrva-Mīmāṁsā-darśana, one of the
earliest hermeneutical schools in Indian antiquity. There is some evidence,
however, that this school was not the only early opinion on the origins of the
Veda.cf., the "Aitihāsikas" According to the Mīmāṃsā tradition, the
mass of knowledge called the Veda became manifested to historical being via the
divine mediation of persons called Rishis, the Seers. This mass of knowledge
was eventually recorded in written form, though for the greater part of Indian
history, these works were passed from generation to generation by a
sophisticated practice of mnemonic heuristics, so that many thousands of hymns
were committed to memory in a phonetically conservative form; The written forms
of these hymns offer us little outward information about the original dates of
discovery or composition. Thus, historians of Vedic texts are frequently left
to making highly inferential arguments for the works by various subtle,
indirect clues.
The following list provides a somewhat common set of reconstructed dates for the terminus ante quem of Hindu texts, by title or genre. All dates here given ought to be regarded as roughly approximate, subject to further revision, and generally as relying for their validity on highly inferential methods and standards of evidence.
The following list provides a somewhat common set of reconstructed dates for the terminus ante quem of Hindu texts, by title or genre. All dates here given ought to be regarded as roughly approximate, subject to further revision, and generally as relying for their validity on highly inferential methods and standards of evidence.
- Rigveda, 1500 – 1100 BCE
- Samaveda, 1500 - 500 BCE
- Yajurveda, 1500 - 500 BCE
- Atharvaveda, 1500 - 500 BCE
- Upanishads, 1200 - 500 BCE
- Bhagavad Gita, 500 BCE - 200 BCE
- Ramayana, 400 BCE - 400 CE
- Mahabharata, 400 BCE - 400 CE
- Samkhya Sutra
- Mimamsa Sutra, 300-200 BCE
- Arthashastra, 400 BCE - 200 CE
- Nyaya Sutra, 2nd century BCE
- Vaiseshika Sutra, 2nd century BCE
- Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 100 BCE - 500 CE
- Brahma Sutra
- Puranas, 3rd - 16th century CE]
- Shiva Sutras, 8th century CE]
- Abhinavabharati, 950 - 1020 CE]
- Yoga Vasistha, 10th - 14th century CE
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