A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c8.s3.51

c8.s3.51

Considerations like these, in addition to what we found before in inquiring into the age of Kâtyâyana, tend to fix the Sûtra period, as a phase in the literary history of India, as about contemporaneous with the first rise of Buddhism; and they would lead us to recognise in the Pariśiṣṭas the exponents of a later age, that had witnessed the triumphs of Buddhism and the temporary decay of Brahmanic learning and power. The real political triumph of Buddhism dates from Aśoka and his council, about the middle of the third century B.C., and while most of the Vedic Sûtras belong to this and the preceding centuries, none of the Pariśiṣṭa were probably written before that time.