The development of the Vedic canon and its schools: the social and political milieu

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Abstract

A detailed list of the texts which make out the Vedic canon does not exist in Vedic or early post-Vedic literature. There are, of course, medieval lists of Vedic texts and schools, such as those contained in the Prapancahrdaya. In the Vedic period itself, we find incipient lists which stress the particular division of the Vedic texts into three (trayī) or four branches (RV, SV, YV; AV). As will be shown, this division became typical as a result of the Kuru reformation of the Vedic ritual. Yet a Vedic corpus, as more or less fixed canon, was recognized and quoted by the early grammarians (Panini c. 400 B.C., Patanjali c. 150 B.C.), and it was detailed in the Pali canon (c. 250 B.C.) which already knew of the complete Vedic corpus.