Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c11.s1.6

c11.s1.6

Even, à priori, considering the wide spread of the Aryan territory and Aryan peoples in India, it must be considered probable, that already in the Vedic age a community of culture had no longer continued to prevail throughout this vast tract. The analogies of kindred nations which force themselves on our attention indicate this. As, though we do not shut our eyes to the reciprocal influences, we are entitled to say that the Dorians of the Peloponnesus created for themselves a culture apart from the Æolians or Ionians, and that to a late period Umbrians, Latins, and Oscans, pursued their own path of religious, political, and literary development, so the historical treatment of India will in a similar way have to separate between western stocks with their Vedic culture, which went ahead in spiritual development, and the eastern peoples, which developed themselves more slowly, between Kurus and Pañcâlas on one side and the peoples of Kosala, Videha, and Magadha on the other. It will have to make this distinction here, even though it is true that the races of India by on means in themselves, and still less for us, presented so sharply imprinted, distinguishing individualities, as did the Grecian stocks; we cannot expect, it is self-apparent, to realize for ourselves the national life of the Kurupañcâlas on the one hand and of the Videha or Kosala peoples on the other hand, in the same way that we know Dorians and Athenians as clearly different types.