The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c28.84

v1.c28.84

The progress of literature during the Maurya period is unfortunately for the most part matter for inference. Only three works, all in their way important, can with certainty be dated in or near it: these are the Arthaçāstra of Chāṇakya, the Mahābhāshya, Patañjali's commentary on the grammatical Sūtras of Pāṇini, and the Pāli Kathāvatthu. The Vedic period, including the Brāhmaṇas and the early Upanishads, was prior to Buddha, and the same may be said in principle of the *Sūtras*, or manuals of rites, public and domestic, the *Vedāṅgas*, treatises on grammar, phonetics, prosody, astronomy, etymology, ritual, whatever may be the date of the treatises which have come down to us. Nor can the like be denied regarding the various forms of quasi-secular literature which are named in works of about this period, the *Purāṇa*, or myth, the *Itivṛitta*, or legend, *Ākhyāyikā*, or tale, *Vākovākya*, or dialogue¹. Some form of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, the former of which we infer from Megasthenes to have been current during this period, belongs also to an earlier epoch. One philosophical system, the Sāṅkhya, seems to be prior to Buddhism: a second, the Vaiçeshika, may have arisen in our period². Finally, the canon of the Pāli Buddhism and also that of the Jains, which is said to have been fixed at Pāṭaliputra in 313 (312) B.C., and the system of the Lokāyatas or Ājīvikas, are also in substance pre-Maurya³.