On the localisation of Vedic texts and schools: materials on Vedic Sakhas, 7

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Abstract

The Vedas have now been studied scientifically for more than 150 years, but, regarding the geographical area where these texts were composed, one hardly finds more in the handbooks and in secondary literature than some rather general statements, e.g. that the bulk of the Vedic texts must have been composed in Northern India in the first millennium B.C. This certainly is due to the - prima facie - few direct and clear references to well-known rivers, mountains, the ocean etc. The Vedic texts, however, were neither composed by single persons living at a certain place nor by a multitude of authors coming from all parts of the country, but a particular text normally is the work of a school sakha of priests and theologians who were living in a particular area (and at a certain time).