[Y-Indology] Age of the Upanishads - e.g.Aitareya

[Guest guest]

The Aitareya is attached to the Rgveda. It's one of the early prose

UpaniSads, and I would very tentatively place it c. 500 BCE, for reasons

explained in the introduction to my translation (Penguin India, 2000).

Others, on various grounds, would place it much earlier, some perhaps a

little later. It may originally have been handed down orally: it is in a

rhythmic prose style which would be conducive to learning by heart. All

extant manuscript versions are relatively recent--I don't know which is

considered to be the oldest.

 

Dr Valerie J Roebuck

Manchester, UK

 

tejasvi naav adhiitam astu

 

 

>What is the age of the upanishads .Let us take the Aitreya as an ex.

>What Veda is this attached to ? Who was the author of this upanishad ?

>When was this first composed ? What is the oldest palmleaf version

>and the oldest commentary on the Aitreya ? Is the oldest written

>version still extant, in Devanagari or some grantha script ?

>

>Kaushal

>Ma vidvishaavaheyii

[Guest guest]

Regarding the ages of Upanishad, etc., a comment and request :

 

Until archaelogy gives us something to which we can tie a text,

the absolute dates for the pre-Buddhist texts of India appear to

be out of reach.

 

Therefore, in my opinion, it makes sense to set up a "standard"

relative chronology for this period. The relative chronology is

probably much less controversial than the absolute chronology.

 

E.g., in a discussion on the Indian Civilization group, it was said

that the Rig Veda may be coeval with the Mitanni documents( around

1400 BC). It was also said that Mary Boyce speculates that the

date of Zoroaster may be as far back as 1400 BC.

 

This would lead the unwary to think that there is a claim that

Zoroaster is as old as the RV. But looked at more carefully,

it seems to me that Boyce puts the RV at 1700 BC, and Zoroaster

to 300-600 years after that. i.e., Boyce's arguments are for a

relative chronology, and if the RV is from 1200 BC, Zoroaster

would be 900-600 BC.

 

E.g., when Dr. Roebuck writes that the Aitereya is from 500 BC,

without reading her book, it is not clear whether she means a

little before Buddha (an absolute date) or say, 700 years from

the earliest RV compositions that she places at 1200 BC.

 

In a relative chronology, we would have the relative dates of a

few texts A,B,C the relative chronology that we are reasonably

confident about, and Dr. R. could write, say, the Upanishad is 700

years post-RV-A (relative chronology) and pre-Buddha (absolute

chronology), and it would be much more clear. We could quote

Dr. Boyce as arguing that Zoroaster is 300-600 years post-RV-A,

and avoid all possibility of misunderstanding, etc.

 

Thank you !

-Arun Gupta

[Guest guest]

Arun Gupta's idea about using relative chronology reminds me about a

management technique called Project Management. There is software available

e.g., Microsoft Project. The way this works, every civilization can be

represented by an "activity" in the project. Each activity can have an

earliest start date, latest start date (the difference between the dates is

called a slack), length of the activity is the time the civilization or the

phase of that civilization lived; then there is the earliest end date,

latest end date (and difference is also a slack). After the whole network of

possibilities is built up, the route that has shortest slack is called

critical path. A complex problem like history of civilizations deserves a

complex tool. Using the tool will also help the historian to play with the

model easily.

 

Regards

Bhadraiah

_______________

Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

[Guest guest]

Please note that in my posting I used the words "very tentatively". "A

little before Buddha" is pretty much what I meant. However not all

scholars even agree about *his* date.

 

See: Bechert, H. (1991, 1992), _The Dating of the Historical Buddha. Die

Datierung des Historischen Buddha_, 2 volumes, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and

Ruprecht.

 

Dr Valerie J Roebuck

Manchester, UK

 

>E.g., when Dr. Roebuck writes that the Aitereya is from 500 BC,

>without reading her book, it is not clear whether she means a

>little before Buddha (an absolute date) or say, 700 years from

>the earliest RV compositions that she places at 1200 BC.

[Guest guest]

Thank you Prof.Roebuck. What are the assumptions behind the dating of

the Upanishad to 500 BCE and how was such a dating arrived at or was

it simply an educated guess and by whom ?. Are there references to

the Upanishads in the Buddhist literature (the Buddhist Sangha is

supposed to have met a hundred years after the death of the Buddha).

What are the earliest written versions and which script were they

written in (Devanagari or Brahmi). Appreciate any answers.

 

Kaushal

 

 

[Copied text of previous posting was removed by the moderator]

[Guest guest]

I'm not being evasive, as it may appear: there really is so little evidence

for the dating of the UpaniSads. Such as it is, I discuss it briefly in the

Introduction to my translation (pp. xiii-xvi), and give some references to

other authors who discuss the problem. You may also find Patrick

Olivelle's Introduction helpful (_UpaniSads_, OUP, 1996, pp. xxxix-xxxvii

and notes).

 

As I pointed out previously, no early written versions survive: all known

manuscripts are later than 1000 CE. They would have been written in

whatever script was current in the area they came from: for example Max

Muller, in the Introduction to his translation, describes a birch bark ms

of the Aitareya from Kashmir in Saaradaa script (_The UpaniSads_, repr.

Dover Books, Vol. I, lxxviii-lxxix).

 

Dr Valerie J Roebuck [not really a Professor]

Manchester, UK

 

>Thank you Prof.Roebuck. What are the assumptions behind the dating of

>the Upanishad to 500 BCE and how was such a dating arrived at or was

>it simply an educated guess and by whom ?. Are there references to

>the Upanishads in the Buddhist literature (the Buddhist Sangha is

>supposed to have met a hundred years after the death of the Buddha).

>What are the earliest written versions and which script were they

>written in (Devanagari or Brahmi). Appreciate any answers.

>

>Kaushal