And here’s something else. Let’s suppose a fabulation.
One of Buddha’s disciples was the brahmin who prophesized that he would either be a … what was it, world-turning king, or sage. Maybe that’s a crazy story, but I have friends in Japan who still go to the soothsayer to get their child’s name and so forth, so people really do this. Obviously then, if Buddha good parents went and did the good thing, then Buddha would have been cultivated in these two vocations.
Now, when exactly the highest priest became the Brahma (as opposed to Hotr, in the main I suppose) I can’t give you a date, except to say before the turn of the millennium. But, at any rate, that Brahma was expected to know the three veda (which are familiar to the EBTs), and eventually, that Brahma took over the preserve of the Atharvaveda, which is an encyclopedia of medicine. There’s clean (pure) and unclean, and the brahmins maintain purity, so they would restrict themselves to the rites that make medicine efficacious.
The sutta I am looking at exhibits very precise “medical” information, and yet obviously isn’t involved in the magical stuff of the Atharvaveda. It’s dealing with something very different.
As well, there is a sutta, and I would have to find it, in which Buddha says, Ok the formless world, fine, but you need to be aware that you’re playing games with yourself.
I’m not going to draw these threads into a conclusion for you, because I am just looking at this stuff, but I think you can get the gist of what I am saying.
I don’t think this is unreasonable. The Upanisads show clear emergence of the kshatriya over the brahmins, to the point where they are teaching key doctrine to stupid students (brahmacarya) who were never taught by their father-sages (acarya). You have to realize that the brahmacarya lived an ascetic lifestyle until they became householders and lit their own fires.