"What about the literary sources regarding the beginning of historic writing in India? The problem about these sources is that scholars are seldom unanimous about their dates. Let us take the case of the Buddhist Jataka stories. I believe that they relate to conditions around 500 BC and this I do mainly on the ground that the principality of Kasi was an independent kingdom under Brahmadatta when the Jataka stories were being narrated and that this independence was lost when the Magadhan king Ajatasatru annexed it in the sixth/fifth century BC. The logic splitting over the Jatakas has never ended; some people argue that their verse portion is earlier than their prose portion, and for some inscrutable reason, D.D. Kosambi, a mathematician who thought he knew how ancient Indian history should be written, took it for granted that the context of the Jataka stories included early centuries AD. In any case, the Jatakas were familiar with writing and this literary text should suggest that writing was known in historic India around 500 BC."