[Buddha-l] textual linearity vs fluidity in dialogue

[jkirk]

Since I posted a query asking if anyone thought the Brihad.A.Upanishad was 
earlier or later than the Buddha's dates, nobody bothered to reply, so I 
take the liberty of reposting a comment from another list (that some of you 
are on as well) which not only answers my query indirectly, but also makes a 
sage point that seems applicable to the discussion about pudgalavada texts 
as well:

"In a similar vein, I note that my article on the
Chaandyoga-U., "Indra's search for the self" (reprinted in
my  book _Reason's Traces_) suggests -- though I did not
state this as robustly as I now think I should have -- that
the final redaction of that "early" Upani.sad was also
post-Buddha. It seems to me that the 19th cent. model -- one
text or tradition coming after another in a linear series --
has to be definitively abandoned in favor of a more
fluid conception in which texts and traditions evolved in
dialogue with one another and arrived at their "finished"
forms in processes spanning centuries. Certainly, works like
the BAU and the ChU seem better understood in this way.

Matthew Kapstein
Chicago and Paris"
(End re-post)

Joanna