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Revival of Sramana Dharma in the Later Vedic Age
Jyoti Prasad Jain
The Vedic age of Indian history is supposed to have ended with the Mahābhārata War, which is now generally fixed in the fifteenth century before the birth of Christ. According to the Brahmanical Pauranic tradition, the war also marked the end of the Dvāpara age and the beginning of the Kali-yuga. And, historically, the period from circa 1400 B. C. to 600 B.C. is designated as the Later Vedic Age, which is synchronised by a great revival of Sramanism and a consequent decline in Brahmanical Vedicism.
The chief features of this age were an unprecedented elaboration and rigidity in Vedic ritualism, a classification and compilation of the Vedic hymns into four Samhitās (sk, Yajuḥ, Sāma and Atharva), the writing of abstruse prose commentaries, called the Brāhmaṇa on the Samhitãs, as also another class of Vedic commentaries, the Aranyakas, so called because they were composed by forest recluses, and the creation of a series of mystico-philosophical treatises, the Upani şads. The six Vedāngas, secondary limbs of the Vedas, were evolved. The simple Vedic hymns were burdened with highly intricate, involved and confusing interpretations. The sacrificial cult, at least in theory, reached its climax. In the time of Adhisimakşşņa, fifth in descent from Parikşita, the Kuru king of Hastinapura, the sutas, it is said, recited before a congregation of Brahmanical ascetics the traditional saga of ancient heroes, said to have been originally composed by the Rși Vyåsa. It was this collection of traditional lore which later formed the basis of the epics, the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata, dating not much earlier than the beginning of the Christian era, and of the principal Brahmanical Purāņas, produced in the Gupta and post-Gupta periods,
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