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Ahnaf Ibn Qais's avatar

Also (just FYI) there might not be a next week :'P Just sayin!

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Ahnaf Ibn Qais's avatar

In general, Transmission is best done via Oral Tradition. Lower than that there is the Written word, and lower than that you have various levels of Archeological evidence (i.e. ruins, reconstruction, etc). So whilst the reconstruction you provide sounds compelling, it is sort of akin to Abductive Reasoning (i.e. "What sort of model best accounts for the data here?").

Sadly, I think one cannot go beyond said level. This btw is true for many past peoples. A lot of the Masterpieces of Pali and Prakrit literature (for example) are lost to the sands of time due to the bulk of them being written down on Palm leaves (which decay rapidly in a High Humidity climate like the Bengal Delta). It is a minor miracle that we even have a "Pali Canon" intact given said fact.

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