"Whether people like it or not, the fact is that there is no credible proof that Valmiki's Ramayana post-dates the Buddha. There is a complete absence of mention of Buddha or Mahavira or their followers or of Nandas, Mauryas or Shungas and so on. There is no mention of Pataliputra or Rajagriha. Rather, the latter's predecessor Girivraja is mentioned. Even if there were additions to the text in subsequent centuries, the data in the text itself is clear that it belongs to a much older era. In a country of 1.2 billion people, you will find all sorts of interpretations and retellings... When even early Buddhist authors can claim (e.g., the Spitzer Manuscript, dated to 200 AD or earlier on palaeographic grounds) that the omniscience of Buddha is proven because he had studied the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the obvious conclusion is that these texts were considered pre-Buddha even by Buddhist writers at that time. Otherwise, they would not fool their readers. For that matter Jatakas etc. have their own versions of Krishna's life too. But it is obvious which one is older and which is a recast."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Agarwal V., as quoted in The Huffington Post debate on A.K. Ramanujan 2012
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Ramayana
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Historicity of the Ramayana
3 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Historicity of the Ramayana →
Related Quotes
"References to the story of Rama occur in the earliest part of the Sangama literature of Tamil Nadu, dating back to a …"
"In the Buddhist literature there are the Jatakas, three of which deal with the story of Rama... The most noteworthy o…"
"Put simply, the main insight of the Vaiśeṣika is that consciousness is not to be found as a property that emerges out…"
"Kaṇāda speaks of nitya as a property that does not change or is invariant. From the perspective of physics, the idea …"
"There are nine classes of substances (dravya), some of which are non-atomic, some atomic, and others all-pervasive. T…"
"The intuition behind the theory is that one atom is indicative of solidity and this is the heaviest; the second atom …"
"As I began to study the VS I was astonished by the sophistication of the system. Concluding that Kaṇāda’s work is a m…"
"The Vaiśeṣika system has categories not only for space-time-matter but also for attributes related to perception of m…"
"The VS anticipates most of Newton’s laws of motion, including the one on how an object continues in its state of rest…"
"The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra (VS) is a central Indian text, but somehow it was ignored by scholars during the past century or …"