"Buddha" before the Pali Canon?

[Steve Farmer]

> Hence I view the redatings of early Buddhism by Bechert et
> al.(which I fully support) to be redatings of the Pali canon and
> not of "the Buddha" -- and am hence equally skeptical about
> claims about "the language of the Buddha" (not only don't pot
> speak, as the saying has it, but neither do biographical
> constructs - or if they do they are surely multilingual).

Let me simultaneously correct my typo (read "pots" for "pot") and
clarify my murky metaphor: the expression "pots don't speak"
refers to the archaeological/linguistic error of associating
given cultural traits (e.g., pottery types) with single
linguistic groups in a knee-jerk fashion. This is an especially
dangerous error in attempts to link archaeological data with the
Aryan migration issue in India. By extension, if "the Buddha" is
an historical construct, and the ideas ascribed to him were
syncretic products originating in multiple cultural contexts, it
doesn't make sense to identify him with a single language either.
Did "Jesus" in fact speak Aramaic, as is often claimed? Not if we
believe that his "life" was a construct assembled from diverse
cultural elements, including Greek-speaking Platonic elements
reflected in his "life" in the Gospel according to John, various
gnostic texts, etc.