The History of Indian Literature c9.415.1

c9.415.1

Now those data in the Sútras which have hitherto been taken as valid for Buddha's time, but which we can only consider as valid, primarily, for the time when the Sútras were composed, are chiefly of a kind bearing upon the history of the Indian religion. For just as Buddha recognised the existence of caste, so, too, he naturally recognised the then existing Hindú Pantheon.‡ But it must not by any means be imagined that in Buddha's time this Pantheon had attained to that phase of development which we here find in the Sútras, assuming that we follow the Southern chronology and place Buddha in the sixth century b.c., that is, doubtless, in the period of the Bráhmaṇas,—works in which a totally different Pantheon prevails. But if, on the other hand, he did not teach until the fourth century b.c., as must be the case if the assertion of the Tibetans and Chinese be correct, to the effect that the third council took place under Kanishka (who lived a.d. 40), four hundred years after Buddha's death—and this view is favoured by the circumstance that of the names of teachers who are mentioned as contemporaries of Buddha, such as reappear in the Brahmanical writings all belong to the literature of the Vedic Sútras, not to that of the Bráhmaṇas—there would at least be a greater possibility, *à priori*, that the Pantheon found in the Buddhistic Sútras, together with similar data, might have some validity for the time of Buddha, which on this supposition would be much nearer to them.