We cannot explain the development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting… - Moriz Winternitz

From the mystical doctrines of the Upanishads, one current of thought may be traced to the mysticism of Persian Sufism, to the mystic, theosophic logos doctrine of the Neo-Platonics and the Alexandrian Christian Mystics, Eckhart and Tauler, and finally to the philosophy of the great German mystic of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer."

As Winternitz ( 1962) points out, "it is at the fixing on these purely arbitrary dates that the untenable part of Max Muller's calculations begins" (255).

As Maurice Winternitz ... notes about the Vajrasûchî, a text attributed to the Brahmin-born monk Ashvaghosha: 'This work refutes the Brahmanical caste system very cuttingly. The author (...) seeks to prove from the Brahmanical texts themselves, by quotations from the Veda, the Mahâbhârata and the law book of Manu, how frail the claims of the Brahman caste are.'