2. The Sanskrit literature has been the subject of still more careful study by a series of learned men. See Donaldson’s _Cratylus_, b. i. ch. ii. § 36. 3d ed. Nearly the whole of the literature indirectly offers materials for a history of the alteration and deterioration of religious and ethical ideas, and of the relation of schools of philosophy to a national creed preserved by the priesthood and deposited in books esteemed sacred. The literary works can be placed in their relative order, though the absence of all chronological dates from the time of the contact of the Indians with the Greeks (third century B.C.), down to the visits of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims in the fourth and seventh centuries A.D., whose works have been translated into French by A. Remusat and Stanislas Julien,(1055) and the Mahometan histories, renders the determination of absolute dates impossible. The following are the dates approximately given for the chief works of Sanskrit literature. The _Vedas_, especially the oldest, date from B.C. 1200 to 600. The _Epic Poems_, the _Rámáyana_ and _Mahábhárata_, are perhaps of the third century B.C.; the laws of _Manu_, or more truly of the family which claimed descent from the mythical _Manu_, contain materials dating from several centuries B.C., but were put into their present form probably several centuries A.D.; the _Bhagavat Gitá_, an episode in the _Mahábhárata_ bearing traces of a Christian influence, dates some centuries A.D. The Hindu drama is perhaps subsequent to 500 A.D. The _Puránas_ carry on the literature to mediæval times. Several of the systems of philosophy were probably constructed anterior to the Christian era; but the date at which they were put into their present form is undetermined. The earlier literature is regarded as the most valuable for the study of the growth of religious ideas and institutions. The development or deterioration may be traced from the simple nature-worship of the _Vedas_, to the accumulation of legends which disgrace the modern creed. The causes which gave birth to mythology are no longer a matter of conjecture; the study of the Sanskrit language and literature having exhibited an historical instance of it. In this way the early Sanskrit literature becomes one of the most precious treasures to the mental philosopher who approaches his subject from the historical side.