Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) by Charles Eliot

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We gather from the Pitakas that writing was well known in the Buddha's
time[621]. But though it was used for inscriptions, accounts and even
letters, it was not used for books, partly because the Brahmans were
prejudiced against it, and partly because no suitable material for
inditing long compositions had been discovered. There were religious
objections to parchment and leaves were not employed till later. The
minute account of monastic life given in the Vinaya makes it certain
that the monks did not use writing for religious purposes. Equally
conclusive, though also negative, is the fact that in the accounts of
the assemblies at Rajagaha and Vesali[622] when there is a dispute as to
the correct ruling on a point, there is no appeal to writing but merely
to the memory of the oldest and most authoritative monks. In the Vinaya
we hear of people who know special books: of monks who are preachers of
the Dhamma and others who know the Sutta: of laymen who have learnt a
particular suttanta and are afraid it will fall into oblivion unless
others learn it from them. Apprehensions are expressed that suttas will
be lost if monks neglect to learn them by heart[623]. From inscriptions
of the third century B.C.[624] are quoted words like Petaki, a reciter
of the Pitakas or perhaps of one Pitaka: Suttantika and Suttantakini, a
man or woman who recites the suttantas: Pancanekayika, one who recites
the five Nikayas. All this shows that from the early days of Buddhism
onwards a succession of persons made it their business to learn and
recite the doctrine and disciplinary rules and, considering the
retentiveness of trained memories, we have no reason to doubt that the
doctrine and rules have been preserved without much loss[625].

Not, however, without additions. The disadvantage of oral tradition is
not that it forgets but that it proceeds snowball fashion, adding with
every generation new edifying matter. The text of the Vedic hymns was
preserved with such jealous care that every verse and syllable was
counted. But in works of lesser sanctity interpolations and additions
were made according to the reciters' taste. We cannot assign to the
Mahabharata one date or author, and the title of Upanishad is no
guarantee for the age or authenticity of the treatises that bear it.
Already in the Anguttara-Nikaya[626], we hear of tables of contents and
the expression is important, for though we cannot give any more precise
explanation of it, it shows that care was taken to check the contents of
the works accepted as scripture. But still there is little doubt that
during the two or three centuries following the Buddha's death, there
went on a process not only of collection and recension but also of
composition.

An account of the formation of the canon is given in the last two
chapters of the Cullavagga[627]. After the death of the Buddha his
disciples met to decide what should be regarded as the correct doctrine
and discipline. The only way to do that was to agree what had been the
utterances of the master and this, in a country where the oral
transmission of teaching was so well understood, amounted to laying the
foundations of a canon. Kassapa cross-examined experts as to the
Buddha's precepts. For the rules of discipline Upali was the chief
authority and we read how he was asked where such and such a rule--for
instance, the commandment against stealing--was promulgated.

"At Rajagaha, sir."

"Concerning whom was it spoken?"

"Dhaniya, the potter's son."

"In regard to what matter?"

"The taking of that which had not been given."

For collecting the suttas they relied on the testimony of Ananda and
asked him where the Brahmajala[628] was spoken. He replied "between
Rajagaha and Nalanda at the royal rest-house at Ambalatthika."
"Concerning whom was it spoken?" "Suppiya, the wandering ascetic and
Brahmadatta the young Brahman."

Then follows a similar account of the Samannaphala sutta and we are told
that Ananda was "questioned through the five Nikayas." That is no doubt
an exaggeration as applied to the time immediately after the Buddha's
death, but it is evidence that five Nikayas were in existence when this
chapter was written[629].

3

Lines of growth are clearly discernible in the Vinaya and Sutta Pitakas.
As already mentioned, the Khuddaka-Nikaya is, as a collection, later
than the others although separate books of it, such as the Sutta-nipata
(especially the fourth and fifth books), are among the earliest
documents which we possess. But other books such as the Peta-[630] and
Vimana-vatthu show a distinct difference in tone and are probably
separated from the Buddha by several centuries. Of the other four
Nikayas the Samyutta and Anguttara are the more modern and the Anguttara
mentions Munda, King of Magadha who began to reign about forty years
after the Buddha's death. But even in the two older collections, the
Digha and the Majjhima, we have not reached the lowest stratum. The
first thirteen suttantas of the Digha all contain a very ancient
tractate on morality, and the Samannaphala and following sections of the
Digha and also some suttas of the Majjhima contain either in whole or in
part a treatise on progress in the holy life. These treatises were
probably current as separate portions for recitation before the suttas
in which they are now set were composed.

Similarly, the Vinaya clearly presupposes an old code in the form of a
list of offences called the Patimokkha. The Mahavagga contains a portion
of an ancient word-for-word explanation of this code[631] and most of
the Sutta-vibhanga is an amplification and exposition of it. The
Patimokkha was already in existence when these books were composed, for
we hear[632] that if in a company of Bhikkhus no one knows the
Patimokkha, one of the younger brethren should be sent to some better
instructed monastery to learn it. And further we hear[633] that a
learned Bhikkhu was expected to know not merely the precepts of the
Patimokkha but also the occasion when each was formulated. The place,
the circumstances and the people concerned had been in each case handed
down. There is here all the material for a narrative. The reciter of a
sutta simply adopts the style of a village story-teller. "Thus have I
heard. Once upon a time the Lord was dwelling at Rajagaha," or wherever
it was, and such and such people came to see him. And then, after a more
or less dramatic introduction, comes the Lord's discourse and at the end
an epilogue saying how the hearers were edified and, if previously
unconverted, took refuge in the true doctrine.

The Cullavagga states that the Vinaya (but not the other Pitakas) was
recited and verified at the Council of Vesali. As I have mentioned
elsewhere, Sinhalese and Chinese accounts speak of another Council, the
Mahasangha or Mahasangiti. Though its date is uncertain, there is a
consensus of tradition to the effect that it recognized a canon of its
own, different from our Pali Canon and containing a larger amount of
popular matter.

Sinhalese tradition states that the canon as we now have it was fixed at
the third Council held at Pataliputra in the reign of Asoka (about
272-232 B.C.). The most precise statements about this Council are those
of Buddhaghosa who says that an assembly of monks who knew the three
Pitakas by heart recited the Vinaya and the Dhamma.

But the most important and interesting evidence as to the existence of
Buddhist scriptures in the third century B.C. is afforded by the Bhabru
(or Bhabra) edict of Asoka. He recommends the clergy to study seven
passages, of which nearly all can be identified in our present edition
of the Pitakas[634]. This edict does not prove that Asoka had before him
in the form which we know the Digha and other works cited. But the most
cautious logic must admit that there was a collection of the Buddha's
sayings to which he could appeal and that if most of his references to
this collection can be identified in our Pitakas, then the major part of
these Pitakas is probably identical in substance (not necessarily
verbally) with the collection of sayings known to Asoka.

Neither Asoka nor the author of the Katha-vatthu cites books by name.
The latter for instance quotes the well-known lines "anupubbena medhavi"
not as coming from the Dhammapada but as "spoken by the Lord." But the
author of the Questions of Milinda, who knew the canonical books by the
names they bear now, also often adopts a similar method of citation.
Although this author's probable date is not earlier than our era his
evidence is important. He mentions all five Nikayas by name, the titles
of many suttas and also the Vibhanga, Dhatu-katha, Puggala-Pannatti,
Katha-vatthu, Yamaka and Patthana.

Everything indicates and nothing discredits the conclusion that this
canon of the Vibhajjavadins was substantially fixed in the time of
Asoka, so far as the Vinaya and Sutta Pitakas are concerned. Some works
of minor importance may have had an uncertain position and subsequent
revisions may have been made but the principal scriptures were already
recognized and contained passages which occur in our versions. On the
other hand this recension of the scriptures was not the only one in
existence. If the patronage of Asoka gave it a special prestige in his
lifetime, it may have lost it in India after his death and for many
centuries the Buddhist Canon, like the list of the Upanishads, must have
been susceptible of alteration. The Sarvastivadins compiled an
Abhidhamma Pitaka of their own, apparently in the time of Kanishka, and
the Dharmagupta school also seems to have had its own version of this
Pitaka[635]. The date of the Pali Abhidhamma is very doubtful and I do
not reject the hypothesis that it was composed in Ceylon, for the
Sinhalese seem to have a special taste for such literature. But there is
no proof of this Sinhalese origin.

According to Sinhalese tradition all three Pitakas were introduced into
Ceylon by Mahinda in the reign of Asoka, but only as oral tradition and
not in a written form. They received this latter about 20 B.C., as the
result of a dispute between two monasteries[636]. The controversy is
obscure but it appears that the ancient foundation called Mahavihara
accepted as canonical the fifth book of the Vinaya called Parivara,
whereas it was rejected by the new monastery called Abhayagiri. The
Sinhalese chronicle (Mahavamsa XXXIII. 100-104) says somewhat abruptly
"The wise monks had hitherto handed down the text of the three Pitakas
(Pitakattayapalim) as well as the commentary by word of mouth. But
seeing that mankind was becoming lost, they assembled together and wrote
them in books in order that the faith might long endure." This brief
account seems to mean that a council was held not by the whole clergy of
Ceylon but by the monks of the Mahavihara at which they committed to
writing their own version of the canon including the Parivara. This book
forms an appendix to the Vinaya Pitaka and in some verses printed at the
conclusion is said to be the work of one Dipa. It is generally accepted
as a relatively late production, composed in Ceylon. If such a work was
included in the canon of the Mahavihara, we must admit the possibility
that other portions of it may be Sinhalese and not Indian.

But still the _onus probandi_ lies with those who maintain the Sinhalese
origin of any part of the Pali Canon and two strong arguments support
the Indian origin of the major part. First, many suttas not only show an
intimate knowledge of ancient Indian customs but discuss topics such as
caste, sacrifice, ancient heresies, and the value of the Veda which
would be of no interest to Sinhalese. Secondly, there is no Sinhalese
local colour and no Sinhalese legends have been introduced. Contrast
with this the Dipa-and Maha-vamsa both of which open with accounts of
mythical visits paid by the Buddha to Ceylon[637].

In Ceylon versions of the scriptures other than that of the Mahavihara
were current until the twelfth century when uniformity was enforced by
Parakrama Bahu. Some of these, for instance the Pitaka of the
Vetulyakas, were decidedly heretical according to the standard of local
orthodoxy but others probably presented variations of reading and
arrangement rather than of doctrine. Anesaki[638] has compared with the
received Pali text a portion of the Samyuktagama translated by
Gunabhadra into Chinese. He thinks that the original was the text used
by the Abhayagiri monastery and brought to China by Fa Hsien.

The Sinhalese ecclesiastical history, Nikaya-Sangrahawa, relates[639]
that 235 years after the Buddha's death nine heretical fraternities were
formed who proceeded to compose scriptures of their own such as the
Varnapitaka and Angulimala-Pitaka. Though this treatise is late (_c_.
1400 A.D.) its statements merit attention as showing that even in
orthodox Ceylon tradition regarded the authorized Pitaka as one of
several versions. But many of the works mentioned sound like late
tantric texts rather than compositions of the early heretics to whom
they are attributed.

Ecclesiastical opinion in Ceylon after centuries of discussion ended by
accepting the edition of the Mahavihara as the best, and we have no
grounds for rejecting or suspecting this opinion. According to tradition
Buddhaghosa was well versed in Sanskrit but deliberately preferred the
southern canon. The Mahayanist doctor Asanga cites texts found in the
Pali version, but not in the Sanskrit[640]. The monks of the Mahavihara
were probably too indulgent in admitting late scholastic treatises, such
as the Parivara. On the other hand they often showed a critical instinct
in rejecting legendary matter. Thus the Sanskrit Vinayas contain many
more miraculous narratives than the Pali Vinaya.

4

European critics have rarely occasion to discuss the credibility of
Sanskrit literature, for most of it is so poetic or so speculative that
no such question arises. But the Pitakas raise this question as directly
as the Gospels, for they give the portrait of a man and the story of a
life, in which an overgrowth of the miraculous has not hidden or
destroyed the human substratum. How far can we accept them as a true
picture of what Gotama was and taught?

Their credibility must be judged by the standard of Indian oral
tradition. Its greatest fault comes from that deficiency in historic
sense which we have repeatedly noticed. Hindu chroniclers ignore
important events and what they record drifts by in a haze in which
proportion, connection, and dates are lost. They frequently raise a
structure of fiction on a slight basis of fact or on no basis at all.
But the fiction is generally so obvious that the danger of historians in
the past has been not to be misled by it but to ignore the elements of
truth which it may contain. For the Hindus have a good verbal memory;
their genealogies, lists of kings and places generally prove to be
correct and they have a passion for catalogues of names. Also they take
a real interest in describing doctrine. If the Buddha has been
misrepresented, it is not for want of acumen or power of transmitting
abstruse ideas. The danger rather is that he who takes an interest in
theology is prone to interpret a master's teaching in the light of his
own pet views.

The Pitakas illustrate the strong and weak points of Hindu tradition.
The feebleness of the historical sense may be seen in the account of
Devadatta's doings in the Cullavagga[641] where the compiler seems
unable to give a clear account of what he must have regarded as
momentous incidents. Yet the same treatise is copious and lucid in
dealing with monastic rules, and the sayings recorded have an air of
authenticity. In the suttas the strong side of Hindu memory is brought
into play. Of consecutive history there is no question. We have only an
introduction giving the names of some characters and localities followed
by a discourse. We know from the Vinaya that the monks were expected to
exercise themselves in remembering these things, and they are precisely
the things that they would get rightly by heart. I see no reason to
doubt that such discourses as the sermon preached at Benares[642] and
the recurring passages in the first book of the Digha-Nikaya are a Pali
version of what was accepted as the words of the Buddha soon after his
death. And the change of dialect is not of great importance. Asoka's
Bhabru Edict contains the saying: _Thus the good law shall long endure_,
which is believed to be a quotation and certainly corresponds pretty
closely with a passage in the Anguttara-Nikaya[643]. The King's version
is _Saddhamma cilathitike hasati_: the Pali is _Saddhammo ciratthitiko
hoti_. Somewhat similar may have been the differences between the
Buddha's speech and the text which we possess. The importance of the
change in language is diminished and the facility of transmission is
increased by the fact that in Pali, Sanskrit and kindred Indian
languages ideas are concentrated in single words rather than spread over
sentences. Thus the principal words of the sermon at Benares give its
purport with perfect clearness, if they are taken as a mere list without
grammatical connection. Similarly I should imagine that the recurring
paragraphs about progress in the holy life found in the early Suttas of
the Digha-Nikaya are an echo of the Buddha's own words, for they bear an
impress not only of antiquity but of eloquence and elevation. This does
not mean that we have any sermon in the exact form in which Gotama
uttered it. Such documents as the Samannaphala-sutta and Ambattha-sutta
probably give a good idea of his method and style in consecutive
discourse and argument. But it would not be safe to regard them as more
than the work of compilers who were acquainted with the surroundings in
which he lived, the phrases he used, and the names and business of those
who conversed with him. With these they made a picture of a day in his
life, culminating in a sermon[644].

Like the historical value of the Pitakas, their literary value can be
justly estimated only if we remember that they are not books in our
sense but treatises handed down by memory and that their form is
determined primarily by the convenience of the memory. We must not
compare them with Plato and find them wanting, for often, especially in
the Abhidhamma, there is no intention of producing a work of art, but
merely of subdividing a subject and supplying explanations. Frequently
the exposition is thrown into the form of a catechism with questions and
answers arranged so as to correspond to numbered categories. Thus a
topic may be divided into twenty heads and six propositions may be
applied to each with positive or negative results. The strong point of
these Abhidhamma works---and of Buddhist philosophy generally--lies in
careful division and acute analysis but the power of definition is weak.
Rarely is a definition more than a collection of synonyms and very often
the word to be defined is repeated in the definition. Thus in the
Dhamma-sangani the questions, what are good or bad states of mind?
receive answers cast in the form: when a good or bad thought has arisen
with certain accompaniments enumerated at length, then these are the
states that are good or bad. No definition of good is given.

This mnemonic literature attains its highest excellence in poetry. The
art of composing short poems in which a thought, emotion or spiritual
experience is expressed with a few simple but pregnant words in the
compass of a single couplet or short hymn, was carried by the early
Buddhists to a perfection which has never been excelled. The
Dhammapada[645] is the best known specimen of this literature. Being an
anthology it is naturally more suited for quotation or recitation in
sections than for continuous reading. But its twenty-five chapters are
consecrated each to some special topic which receives fairly consecutive
treatment, though each chapter is a mosaic of short poems consisting of
one or more verses supposed to have been uttered by the Buddha or by
arhats on various occasions. The whole work combines literary beauty,
depth of thought and human feeling in a rare degree. Not only is it
irradiated with the calm light of peace, faith and happiness but it
glows with sympathy, with the desire to do good and help those who are
struggling in the mire of passion and delusion. For this reason it has
found more favour with European readers than the detached and
philosophic texts which simply preach self-conquest and aloofness.
Inferior in beauty but probably older is the Sutta-nipata, a collection
of short discourses or conversations with the Buddha mostly in verse.
The rugged and popular language of these stanzas which reject
speculation as much as luxury, takes us back to the life of the
wanderers who followed the Buddha on his tours and we may imagine that
poems like the Dhaniya sutta would be recited when they met together in
a rest-house or grove set apart for their use on the outskirts of a
village.

The Buddhist suttas, are interesting as being a special result of
Gotama's activity; they are not analogous to the Brahmanic works called
sutras, and they have no close parallel in later Indian literature.
There is little personal background in the Upanishads, none at all in
the Sankhya and Vedanta sutras. But the Sutta Pitaka is an attempt to
delineate a personality as well as to record a doctrine. Though the idea
of writing biography has not yet been clearly conceived, yet almost
every discourse brings before us the figure of the Lord: though the
doctrine can be detached from the preacher, yet one feels that the
hearers of the Pitaka hungered not merely for a knowledge of the four
truths but for the very words of the great voice: did he really say
this, and if so when, where and why? Most suttas begin by answering
these questions. They describe a scene and report a discourse and in so
doing they create a type of literature with an interest and
individuality of its own. It is no exaggeration to say that the Buddha
is the most living figure in Hindu literature. He stands before us more
distinctly not only than Yajnavalkya and Sankara, but than modern
teachers like Nanak and Ramanuja and the reason of this distinctness can
I think be nothing but the personal impression which he made on his age.
The later Buddhists compose nothing in the style of the Nikayas: they
write about Gotama in new and fanciful ways, but no Acts of the Apostles
succeed the Gospels.

Though the Buddhist suttas are _sui generis_ and mark a new epoch in
Indian literature, yet in style they are a natural development of the
Upanishads. The Upanishads are less dogmatic and show much less interest
in the personality of their sages, but they contain dialogues closely
analogous to suttas. Thus about half of the Brihad-Aranyaka is a
philosophic treatise unconnected with any particular name, but in this
are set five dialogues in which Yajnavalkya appears and two others in
which Ajatasatru and Pravahana Jaivali are the protagonists.

Though many suttas are little more than an exposition of some doctrine
arranged in mnemonic form, others show eloquence and dramatic skill.
Thus the Samannaphala-sutta opens with a vivid description of the visit
paid one night by Ajatasattu to the Buddha[646]. We see the royal
procession of elephants and share the alarm of the suspicious king at
the unearthly stillness of the monastery park, until he saw the Buddha
sitting in a lighted pavilion surrounded by an assembly of twelve
hundred and fifty brethren, calm and silent as a clear lake. The king's
long account of his fruitless quest for truth would be tiresome if it
were not of such great historic interest and the same may be said of the
Buddha's enumeration of superstitious and reprehensible practices, but
from this point onwards his discourse is a magnificent crescendo of
thought and language, never halting and illustrated by metaphors of
great effect and beauty. Equally forcible and surely resting on some
tradition of the Buddha's own words is the solemn fervour which often
marks the suttas of the Majjhima such as the descriptions of his
struggle for truth, the admonitions to Rahula and the reproof
administered to Sati.

5

As mentioned above, our Pali Canon is the recension of the
Vibhajjavadins. We know from the records of the Chinese pilgrims that
other schools also had recensions of their own, and several of these
recensions--such as those of the Sarvastivadins, Mahasanghikas,
Mahisasakas, Dhammaguttikas, and Sammitiyas--are still partly extant in
Chinese and Tibetan translations. These appear to have been made from
the Sanskrit and fragments of what was probably the original have been
preserved in Central Asia. A recension of the text in Sanskrit probably
implies less than what we understand by a translation. It may mean that
texts handed down in some Indian dialect which was neither Sanskrit nor
Pali were rewritten with Sanskrit orthography and inflexions while
preserving much of the original vocabulary. The Buddha allowed all men
to learn his teaching in their own language, and different schools are
said to have written the scriptures in different dialects, e.g. the
Mahasanghikas in a kind of Prakrit not further specified and the
Mahasammatiyas in Apabhramsa. When Sanskrit became the recognized
vehicle for literary composition there would naturally be in India
(though not in Ceylon) a tendency to rewrite books composed in other
dialects[647]. The idea that when any important matter is committed to
writing it should be expressed in a literary dialect not too
intelligible to the vulgar is prevalent from Morocco to China. The
language of Bengal illustrates what may have happened to the Buddhist
scriptures. It is said that at the beginning of the nineteenth century
ninety per cent, of the vocabulary of Bengali was Sanskrit, and the
grammatical construction sanskritized as well. Though the literary
language now-a-days is less artificial, it still differs widely from the
vernacular. Similarly the spoken word of the Buddha was forced into
conformity with one literary standard or another and ecclesiastical Pali
became as artificial as Sanskrit. The same incidents may be found worked
up in both languages. Thus the Sanskrit version of the story of Purna in
the Divyava-dana repeats what is found in Pali in the
Samyutta-Nikaya[648] and reappears in Sanskrit in the Vinaya of the
Mulasarvastivadin school.