...We shall probably have to date the beginning of this development to about 2000 or 2500 BC - Moriz Winternitz

Almost a century ago, Winternitz ( 1962) was refreshingly forthright about the lack of agreement regarding even the approximate date of the Veda: "It is a fact, and a fact which it is truly painful to admit, that the opinions of the best scholars differ, not to the extent of centuries, but to the extent of thousands of years, with regard to the age of the Rg Veda. Some lay down the year 1000 B.C. as the earliest limit for the Rg Vedic hymns, while others consider them to have originated between 3000 and 2500 B.C." (253).

As regards the kinship of the languages, it is quite impossible to state definite chronological limits within which languages change. Some languages change very rapidly , others remain more or less unaltered for a long period. It is true that hieratic languages, like those of the Vedic hymns and the Avesta, can remain unaltered much longer than spoken languages.

It became a habit already censured by W. D. Whitney, to say that Max Muller had proved 1200-1000 B.C. as the date of the Rg Veda. It was only timidly that a few scholars, like L. von Schroeder ventured to go as far back as 1500 or even 2000 B.C. And when all at once, H. Jacobi attempted to date Vedic literature back to the third millenary B.C. on the grounds of astrological calculations, scholars raised a great outcry at such heretical procedure... Strange to say it has been quite forgotten on what a precarious footing stood the "opinion prevailing hitherto," which was so zealously defended. Max Muller himself did not really wish to say more than that such an interval at least must be assumed. . . . He always considered his date of 1200- 1000 B.C. only as a terminus ad quern.