"Finally, in his Autobiography published just after his death in 1900, he made this astonishing statement: “As to the actual date of the Veda … if we were to place it at 5000 BC, I doubt whether anybody could refute such a date, while if we go back beyond the Veda, and come to measure the time required for the formation of Sanskrit … I doubt whether even 5,000 years would suffice for that.”"