Moriz Winternitz Quotes

1863–1937 Austria

Moriz Winternitz (Horn, December 23, 1863 – Prague, January 9, 1937) was a scholar from Austria who began his Indology contributions working with Max Müller at the Oxford University.

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Random Moriz Winternitz quote

8 quotes

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.

As Winternitz ([1907] 1962) points out, "it is at the fixing on these purely arbitrary dates that the untenable part of Max Muller's calculations begins" (255).

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.

Winternitz (1907), too, hastened to note that "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" (293).

Winternitz (1907)

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.

“Since more than 2000 years the poem of Rama has remained alive in India, and it continues to live in all strata and classes of folk. High and low, princes and peasants, landlords and artisans, princesses and shepherdesses, are well versed with the characters and stories of the great epic.”

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

Moritz, A History of Indian Literature°, vol. I, p. 288.in Danino, M (2010)

It is remarkable however how strong the power of suggestion is even in science. Max Muller's hypothetical and purely arbitrary determination of the Vedic epochs in the course of years, received more and more the dignity and the character of a scientifically proven fact, without any new arguments or actual proofs having been added.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Moriz Winternitz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.