TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu
TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu
TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu
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500- NBP NBP NBP NBP<br />
______________________________________________________________<br />
To begin with the last stratum: It is a characteristic of the Northern<br />
Black Polished pottery that it quickly sprea§s, around 500 B.C., over all<br />
of N. India, just as the late Brāhmaṇa texts suddenly have a geographical<br />
horizon reaching from from Gandhāra (and beyond) to Aṅga, from the<br />
Himālaya in the North to to Vidarbha, Andhra in the South, and<br />
including the South-Eastern tribes of the Puṇḍra, Kaliṅga etc.<br />
If we tentatively align these texts with the NBP culture, which in terms<br />
of the more advanced material culture of the late Vedic period should not<br />
present difficulties, then a problem arises concerning the absolute dates<br />
of the later Brāhmaṇa texts (and of the early Up.s). These have generally<br />
been aligned with the age of the Buddha, who is usually believed to have<br />
lived from 563-483 B.C. However, H. Bechert recently has cast some<br />
doubt on this date: the Buddha might have lived ca. 100 years later. 338 In<br />
fact, as has been pointed out above, the Pāli texts, which were written<br />
down only in the 1st century B.C., but were composed several centuries<br />
earlier, reflect a much later stage in the cultural and political history<br />
than even the late Vedic texts (like the Upaniṣads): in the Pāli texts (like<br />
Dīgha Nikāya) even Magadha and Aṅga are Brahmanical territory, while<br />
the Veda has only a single case (at KA 7.14) where a Brahmin lives in<br />
Magadha, a generally avoided and despised country. Note that there is<br />
no mention of towns in the Vedic texts, nor of writing. Though this may<br />
due to the cultural tendency of the Brahmins who have no use for<br />
writing, as they learnt all their - mostly secret - Vedic texts by heart and<br />
also could preserve their ritual purity better in a village than in a busy<br />
town, both items cannot simply be dismissed. A date of ca. 500 B.C. for<br />
early Up.s ( like BAU, ChU), BŚS, and some late Br. texts like VādhB, 339<br />
and late parts of ŚB, AB 6-8 does not seem, to my mind, impossible, - at<br />
least at the present state of our knowledge.<br />
Interestingly, the geographical knowledge of the Pāli texts agrees with<br />
the area of spread of NBP ware and with that of the later Brāhmaṇa<br />
literature: However, some of the names of the famous 16 kingdoms of<br />
338 See the summary by O.v. Hinüber, Überblick, § 6.<br />
339 Note that BŚS 18.44 perhaps intends the Persians with its term Parśu (see ann. 334, 323);<br />
however, also other tribes of similar names are attested in the area of E.Afghanistan (Gr.<br />
Paryetai, etc.); for this period, cf. H.Kulke, The historical background of Indian's axial age,<br />
forthc.<br />
135