Abhishek’s Reviews > Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism > Status Update

It may be worth repeating that the Middle Indic languages used or adopted by the Buddhists were not derived from Sanskrit, not even from the earliest form of Sanskrit we know, Ṛgvedic Sanskrit. The base dialect (or dialects) of Pāli, for example, was (were) in several points more archaic than Ṛgvedic Sanskrit. What, then, may have driven certain Buddhists to adopt the language of their most fearsome competitors?

"Whatever developments there have been in the area of astrology, astronomy and mathematics — which do not figure among the five sciences — are due to the efforts of brahmanical and jaina thinkers; for reasons that remain to be elucidated, the Buddhists did not participate."

This is turning out to be a most informative book.