TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

500- NBP NBP NBP NBP
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To begin with the last stratum: It is a characteristic of the Northern
Black Polished pottery that it quickly sprea§s, around 500 B.C., over all
of N. India, just as the late Brāhmaṇa texts suddenly have a geographical
horizon reaching from from Gandhāra (and beyond) to Aṅga, from the
Himālaya in the North to to Vidarbha, Andhra in the South, and
including the South-Eastern tribes of the Puṇḍra, Kaliṅga etc.
If we tentatively align these texts with the NBP culture, which in terms
of the more advanced material culture of the late Vedic period should not
present difficulties, then a problem arises concerning the absolute dates
of the later Brāhmaṇa texts (and of the early Up.s). These have generally
been aligned with the age of the Buddha, who is usually believed to have
lived from 563-483 B.C. However, H. Bechert recently has cast some
doubt on this date: the Buddha might have lived ca. 100 years later. 338 In
fact, as has been pointed out above, the Pāli texts, which were written
down only in the 1st century B.C., but were composed several centuries
earlier, reflect a much later stage in the cultural and political history
than even the late Vedic texts (like the Upaniṣads): in the Pāli texts (like
Dīgha Nikāya) even Magadha and Aṅga are Brahmanical territory, while
the Veda has only a single case (at KA 7.14) where a Brahmin lives in
Magadha, a generally avoided and despised country. Note that there is
no mention of towns in the Vedic texts, nor of writing. Though this may
due to the cultural tendency of the Brahmins who have no use for
writing, as they learnt all their - mostly secret - Vedic texts by heart and
also could preserve their ritual purity better in a village than in a busy
town, both items cannot simply be dismissed. A date of ca. 500 B.C. for
early Up.s ( like BAU, ChU), BŚS, and some late Br. texts like VādhB, 339
and late parts of ŚB, AB 6-8 does not seem, to my mind, impossible, - at
least at the present state of our knowledge.
Interestingly, the geographical knowledge of the Pāli texts agrees with
the area of spread of NBP ware and with that of the later Brāhmaṇa
literature: However, some of the names of the famous 16 kingdoms of
338 See the summary by O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, § 6.
339 Note that BŚS 18.44 perhaps intends the Persians with its term Parśu (see ann. 334, 323);
however, also other tribes of similar names are attested in the area of E.Afghanistan (Gr.
Paryetai, etc.); for this period, cf. H.Kulke, The historical background of Indian's axial age,
forthc.
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