Usool al Hadith - Forever Islam

Vysda composed it, Ganesa served as a scribe, and the work was handed downby Vaisampayana, who communicated it to the king Janamejaya. Sauti, whowas present at the time, heard it and narrated it to the assembly of sages. 22However, regardless of where the isnaad originated, there is no doubt that havingadopted the system, Muslims came to consider the isnaad an indispensable part ofthe hadeeths and developed it. They gave it a firm foundation by introducing thechronological method, assembling biographies of the transmitters, andestablishing a science for determining the value of its contents and theauthenticity of its channel of transmission. The ancient Indians, as far as isknown, never made any attempt at a rigorous and consistent treatment of theisnaad, nor did they develop the chronological method. Likewise, Jewishliterature had no usage of the chronological method thereby rendering theirisnaads valueless. In fact, Professor Horovitz, himself, admitted that, ‘In theTalmudic literature there is no idea of chronological method, and the oldest extantwork attempting such an arrangement was composed after 885 AD – more than acentury later than the earliest Islamic work on isnaad-critique. From this fact,’ hegoes on to say, ‘and from the fact that the important Jewish works [of this period]had been composed in the Islamic dominions, it may be inferred that thishistorical interest was due to the Islamic influence.’ 23The practice of specifying the isnaad, not only of the hadeeths but also thebooks in which they were collected, was of immense value in preserving theintegrity of books in an age in which printing was unknown, and the creation ofspurious and distorted works was a relatively easy task. The scholarly practice ofcertification seems to be unique in the world’s literary history, just as hadeethliterature is unique in employing a thorough and systematic method of sourceidentification. Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Syriac manuscripts rarely, if ever, supplyus with such a wealth of information about a book’s origin and use.The isnaad system, while originating in connection with the hadeethliterature, was in due course extended by Arab authors to many other genres,including geography, history, and prose fiction. 2422 Mahabharata, Book I, canto 1; cf. Winternitz, History of Indian Literature (Calcutta, 1927CE),I, 323 quoted in Hadith Literature, pp. 78-9.23 Alter und Ursprund des Isnad, 47. Quoted in Hadith Literature, p. 81.24 Hadith Literature, p. 82-3.