Date of the Buddha and RV

[Madhav Deshpande]

The date of the Buddha and the date of the RV are not directly related.
While it is the dase that the Buddhist suttas like the Tevijja Sutta refer
to Irubbeda (=RV) among other Vedas, the Suttas refer to the authors of
the Vedic mantras (ye te mantaana.m kattaaro isayo) as ancient
personalities (poraa.naa).  This simply indicates a relative choronology
between the Vedic texts like the RV and the Buddhist tradition reflected
the the Pali canon, and there is no easy way of linking the dates of the
Buddha and the RV in such a way that if the date of the  Buddha fluctuates
by a few hundred years, the date of the RV must correspondingly fluctuate
by the same.  Each of these dates, apart from their obvious relative
chronolgy, must be treated as independent values to be determined by
unrelated independent evidence.
                                        Madhav Deshpande

On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, N. Ganesan wrote:

> Dr. Gupt,  writes,
> >A resposne:
> >YES, INDEED , NOT ONLY OF THE RIGVEDA BUT OF THE BIBLE AND THE BIG BAND
> >WHICH BROUGHT THIS COSOS INTO CREATION !
> >BHARAT GUPT
>
>   Dear Professor,
>
>   Sorry for being not able to understand your response.
>   I am pretty sure Buddha's resistance to Vedic and its
>   emergence in such and such a time period has a lot to do
>   with the RV date.
>
>   Suppose scholars worked  out the date of RV taking Buddha's
>   date as 600 B.C., Now that the recent researches by H. Bechert
>   show parinirvana to be 350 B.C.., Correspondingly, RV date has
>   to be brought forward by a minimum of 200 yrs.
>
>   I beg to differ from your view: RV and Buddha are intimately
>   related when compared to (say) Big Bang, Cosmos or the Bible.
>
>   With kind regards,
>   N. Ganesan
>
>
>
>
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