[Buddha-l] Nirvana

[jkirk]

> This text obviously dates from after the primitive Buddhist teachings had 
> started to be "systematised"

and

> I would be interested in seeing studies that look at Buddhist suttas with 
> this sort of criteria.
>
> Joy Vriens
=======================
Yes: your point makes sense, and more critical analysis would be of 
interest, but the problem is that dating of pieces of text is conjectural. 
As I understand the issue, there is no persuasively demonstrable way to 
precisely "date" canonical text. (Please correct me if I'm wrong about 
this.) Linguistic analysis probably offers the only clues, if the linguistic 
data are there.
Joanna