Origin of the Veda

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"Chips from a German Workshop" by Max Muller, Oxford University Press, 1867

Chapter 1: "Lecture on the Vedas or the Sacred Books of the Brahmans, Delivered at Leeds, 1865", pages 17-18"In no country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been so minutely elaborated as in India. The

name for revelation in Sanskrit is Sruti, which means hearing; and this

title distinguished the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Brahmanas

also, from all other works, which however sacred and authoritative to

the Hindu mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors.

The Laws of Manu, for instance, are not revelation; they are not Sruti,

but only Smriti, which means recollection of tradition. If

these laws or any other work of authority can be proved on any point to

be at variance with a single passage of the Veda, their authority is at

once overruled. According to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the Veda was the work of human authors. The

whole Veda is in some way or the other the work of the Deity; and even

those who saw it were not supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings

raised above the level of common humanity, and less liable therefore to

error in the reception of revealed truth. The views entertained by the orthodox theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The

human element, called paurusheyatva in Sanskrit, is driven out of every

corner or hiding place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the

mind of the Deity before the beginning of time..."