"Oriental scholars are frequently suspected of a desire to make the literature of the Eastern nations appear more ancient than it is. As to myself, I can truly say that nothing would be to me a more welcome discovery, nothing would remove so many doubts and difficulties, as some suggestions as to the manner in which certain of the Vedic hymns could have been added to the original collection during the Brâhmana or Sûtra periods, or, if possible, by the writers of our MSS., of which most are not older than the fifteenth century. But these MSS., though so modern, are checked by the Anukramanis. Every hymn which stands in our MSS. is counted in the Index of Saunaka, who is anterior to the invasion of Alexander. The Sûtras, belonging to the same period as Saunaka, prove the previous existence of every chapter of the Brâhmanas; and I doubt whether there is a single hymn in the Sanhitâ of the Rig-Veda which could not be checked by some passage of the Brâhmanas and Sûtras. The chronological limits assigned to the Sûtra and Brâhmana periods will seem to most Sanskrit scholars too narrow rather than too wide, and if we assign but two hundred years to the Mantra period, from 800 to 1000 B.C., and an equal number to the Chhandas period, from 1000 to 1200 B.C., we can do so only under the supposition that during the early periods of history the growth of the human mind was more luxuriant than in later times, and that the layers of thought were formed less slowly in the primary than in the tertiary ages of the world." The Vedic age, according to Müller, will then be as follows:-- Sûtra period, from B.C. 200 to B.C. 600. Brâhmana period, " " 600 " 800. Mantra period, " " 800 " 1000. Chhandas period, " " 1000 " 1200. Dr. Haug, a high authority, considers the Vedic period to extend from B.C. 1200 to B.C. 2000, and the very oldest hymns to have been composed B.C. 2400.