We cannot, however, explain the development of the whole of this great literature, if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 or 1500 B.C. as it… - Moriz Winternitz

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

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-point.

Wintemitz refers to A.C. Woolner as rightly commenting on Max Muller's supposition of 1200 B.C. for the Rigveda's beginning: " As far as any philological estimates go , 2000 B.C. remains quite as possible as 1200 B.C. for the earliest mantra."

Oral tradition, too, presupposes longer intervals of time than would be necessary, had these texts been written down. Generations of pupils and teachers must have passed away before all the existing and the many lost texts had taken definite shape in the Vedic schools, On linguistic, literary and cultural grounds we must therefore assume that many centuries elapsed between the period of the earliest hymns and the final compilation of the hymns into a Samhita or “collection”, for the Rigveda-Samhita after denotes only the close of a period long, past, and again between the Rigveda-Samhita and the other Samhitas and Brahmanas, The Brahmanas themselves, with their numerous schools and branch schools, with their endless lists of teachers and the numerous references to teachers of antiquity, require a period of several centuries for their origin, This literature itself, as well as the spread of the brahmanical culture, theological knowledge, and not least, the priestly supremacy which went hand in hand with it, must have taken centuries, When we come to the Upanisads, we see that they too, belong to different periods of time, that they too pre-suppose generations of teachers and a long tradition.

I, for my part, do not understand why some Western scholars are so anxious to make the hymns of the Rgveda and the civilisation which is reflected in them so very much later than the Babylonian and Egyptian culture.