 section 43 of Hinduism and Buddhism and historical sketch volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shashank Jakhmoila. Hinduism and Buddhism and historical sketch volume 1 by Charles Iliad Ashoka. Part 1. The first period in the history of Buddhism extends from the death of the founder to the death of Ashoka, that is to about 232 BC. It had then not only become a great Indian religion, but had begun to send forth missionaries to foreign countries. But this growth had not yet brought about the internal changes which are inevitable when a creed expands far beyond the boundaries within which it was a natural expression of local thought. An intellectual movement and growth is visible within the limits of the Pali Canon and is confirmed by what we hear of the existence of sects or schools, but it does not appear that in the time of Ashoka, the workings of speculation had led to any point of view materially different from that of Gautama. Our knowledge of general Indian history before the reign of Ashoka is scanty and the data which can be regarded as facts for Buddhist ecclesiastical history are scantier still. We hear of two, or including the Mahasangati three, meetings sometimes called councils. Scriptures, obviously containing various strata, were compiled and 18 sects or schools had time to arise and some of them to decay. Much doubt has been cast upon the councils, but to my mind, this suspicion is unmeditated, provided that to ecclesiastical a meaning is not given to the world. Footnote 551, especially in Auro Frankis article in the J.P.T.S. 1908, to demonstrate the literary dependence of chapters 11-12 of the Kulavaga does not seem to be equivalent to demonstrating that the narratives contained in those chapters are air bubbles. End footnote. We must not suppose that the meetings held at Rajagaha and Vaisali were similar to the Council of Nikeya or that they produced the works edited by Palitech Society. Such terms as canon, dogma and council, though indispensable, are misleading at this period. We want less formal equivalence for the same ideas. A number of men who were strangers to those conceptions of a hierarchy and a Bible which are so familiar to us met together to fix and record the opinions and injunctions of the master or to remove misapprehensions and abuses. Footnote 552. The mantras of the Brahmins were hardly a sacred book analogous to the Bible or Quran and, besides, the early Buddhists would not have wished to imitate them. End footnote. It would be better if we could avoid using even the word Buddhist at this period for it implies a difference sharper than the divisions existing between the followers of Gautama and others. They were in the position of the followers of Christ before they received an Antioch. The name of Christians and the meeting at Rajagaha was analogous to the confidences recorded in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. The record of this meeting and of the subsequent meeting at Vaishali is contained in chapters 11 and 12 of the Kulavaga, which must therefore be later than the second meeting and perhaps considerably later. Other accounts are found in the Deepavansa, Mahabodhivansa and Buddhaghosha's commentaries. The version given in the Kulavaga is abrupt and does not entirely agree with other narratives of what followed on the death of the Buddha. Footnote 553. Example given, the Gambara Nikaya 16. End footnote. It seems to be a combination of two documents, for it opens as a narrative by Kasapa, but it soon turns into a narrative about him. But the clumsiness and compilation and the errors of detail are hardly sufficient to discredit an event which is probable in itself and left an impression on tradition. The Buddha combined great personal authority with equally great liberality. While he was alive, he decided all questions of dogma and discipline himself, but he left to the order authority to abolish all the minor precepts. It seems inevitable that some sort of meeting should have been held to consider the position created by this wide permission. Brief and confused as the story in the Kulavaga is, there is nothing improbable in its outline, namely that a resolution was taken at Kusinara where he died to hold a cyanide during the next rains at Rajigaha, a more central place where arms and lodgings were plentiful and there come to an agreement as to what should be accepted as the true doctrine and discipline. Accordingly, five hundred monks met near this town and inquired into the authenticity of the various rules and sutas. They then went on to ask what the Buddha had meant by the lesser and minor precepts which might be abolished. Ananda, who came in for a good deal of blame in the course of the proceedings, confessed that he had forgotten to ask the master for an explanation and divergent opinions were expressed as to the extent of the discretion allowed. Kasapa finally proposed that the Sangha should adopt without alteration or addition the rules made by the Buddha. This was approved and the Dhamma and Vinaya, as chanted by the assembled Bhikkhus were accepted. The Abhidhamma is not mentioned. The name usually given to these counsel is Sangti, which means singing or chanting together. Anandra is said to have recited the text sentence by sentence and each phrase was intoned after him by the assembly as a sign of acceptance. Upali was the principal authority for the Vinaya and Ananda for the Dhamma, but the limits of the authority claimed by the meeting are illustrated by an anecdote which relates that after the chanting of the law had been completed, Puran and his disciples arrived from the southern hills. Footnote 554 Kullavaga 11 First 11 End footnote The eldest asked him to accept the version rehearsed by them. He replied, The Dhamma and Vinaya have been well sung by the Theras, nevertheless as they have been received and heard by me from the mouth of the Lord, so will I hold them. In other words, the counsel has put together a very good account of the Buddha's teaching, but has no claim to impose it on those who have personal reminiscence of their own. This warrant of a central authority, though less complete than in Brahmanism, marks the early life of the Buddhist community. We read in later works of a succession of elders who are sometimes called patriarchs, but it would be erroneous to think of them as possessing a bescopal authority. Footnote 555 Especially in Chinese works. End footnote Footnote 556 Upali, Dasak, Sonak, Sikgava, with whom the name of Chandravadji is sometimes coupled and Tissa Mogaliputta. This is the list given in Deepavasa. End footnote They were at most the chief teachers of the order. From the death of the Buddha to Ashoka, only five names are mentioned, but five names can fill the interval only if their bearers were unusually long-lived. It is therefore probable that the list merely contains the names of prominent Theras who exercised little authority in virtue of any office, though their personal qualities assured them respect. Upali, who comes first, is called chief of the Vinaya, but so far as there was one head of the order, it seems to have been Kasapa. He is the Brahmin ascetic of Urvela whose conversion is recorded in the first book of Mahavaga and is said to have exchanged robes with the Buddha. Footnote 557 Sam Nikaya, 1611 The whole section is called Kasapa Sanyutta. End footnote He observed that Dutangas and V may conjecture that his influence tended to promote asceticism. Dasaka and Sonaka are also designated as chiefs of the Vinaya, and there was perhaps a distinction between those who studied to use modern phrases, ecclesiastical, law and dogmatic theology. The accounts of the Second Council are as abrupt as those of the first and do not connected with previous events. Footnote 558 They are to be found chiefly in Kulavaga 12 Deepavasa 4 and 5th and Mahavasa 4. End footnote The circumstances said to have led to its meeting are, however, probable. According to the Kulavaga, a hundred years after the death of the Buddha, certain bhikkhus of Vajyan lineage resident at Vaishali upheld ten theses involving relaxation of the older discipline. The most important of these was that monks were permitted to receive gold and silver, but all of them, trivial as they may seem, had a dangerous bearing for the encouraged not only luxury, but the formation of independent schools. For instance, they allowed pupils to cite the practice of their preceptors as a justification for their conduct and authorized monks resident in one parish to hold upasatha in separate companies and not as one united body. The story of the condemnation of these new doctrines contain miraculous incidents but seems to have a historical basis. It relates how a monk called Yasa, when a guest of the monk of Vaishali quarrelled with them because they accepted money from the laity and departing thens sought for support among the Theras or Elders of the South and West. The result was a conference at Vaishali in which the principal figures Aravita and Sabakami, a pupil of Ananda, expressly said to have been ordained 120 years earlier. Footnote 559, the Deepavasa adds that all the principal monks present had seen the Buddha. They must therefore all have been considerably over a hundred years old so that the chronology is open to grave doubt. It would be easier if we could suppose the meeting was held a hundred years after the Enlightenment. End footnote. The ten theses were referred to a committee which rejected them all and this rejection was confirmed by the whole Sangha who proceeded to rehearse the Vinaya. We are not, however, told that they revised their sutta or abhidhamma. Here ends the account of the Kula Vagga but the Deepavasa adds that the wicked Vajjan monks to whom it ascribes wrong doctrines as well as errors in discipline collected a strong faction and held a schismatic council called the Mahasangati. This meeting recited or compiled a new version of the Dhamma and Vinaya. Footnote 560, they are said to have rejected the Parivara, the Patisambhida, the Nidesa and parts of the Jataka. These are all lighter parts of the Canon and if the word rejection were taken literally, it would imply that the Mahasangati was late too but perhaps all that is meant is that the books were not found in their Canon. Chinese sources, example given, Faasain translator Legge, page 99 state that they had an abhidhamma of their own. End footnote. It is not easy to establish any facts about the origin and tenets of this Mahasangatika or Mahasangika sect though it seems to have been important. The Chinese pilgrims, Faasai and Swangchang writing on the basis of information obtained in the 5th and 7th centuries of our era represented as a rising in connection with the first council which was either that of Rajagaha earlier meetings supposed to have been held during the Buddha's lifetime and Swangchang intimates that it was formed of laymen as well as monks and that it accepted additional matters including dharanis or spells rejected by the monkish council. Footnote 561 Buddhist Records of the Western World Volume 2 Pages 164-165 Waters 159-161 End footnote Its name admitted by its oponence seems to imply that it represented at one time the opinions of the majority or at least a great number of the faithful but it was not the sect which flourished in Ceylon and the writers of the Deepavasa is prejudiced against it. It may be a result of this animus that he connects it with the discredible Vajyanshism and the Chinese tradition may be more correct. On the other hand the adherents of the school would naturally be disposed to assign it an early origin. Faasai says that the Vinaya of the Mahasangikas was considered the most complete with the fullest explanations. Footnote 562 Cap 36 Leggy Page 98 End footnote A translation of this text is contained in the Chinese Tripitaka Footnote 563 See, it sings records of the Buddhist religion translated by Taka Kusu page 20 and Nanjiyo's catalogue of the Buddhist Tripitaka Numbers 1199 1105 and 1159 End footnote Early Indian Buddhism is said to have been divided into 18 sects or schools which have long ceased to exist and must not be confounded with any existing denominations. Faasai observes that they agree in essentials and differ only in details and this seems to have been drew not only when he wrote about 420 AD but throughout their history. In different epochs and countries Buddhism presents a series of surprising metamorphoses but the divergences between the sects existing in India at any given time are less profound in character and less violent in expression than the divisions of Christianity. Similarly the so called sects in modern China Burma and Siam are better described as schools in some ways analogous to such parties as the high and low church in England. Footnote 564 An exception ought perhaps to be made for the Japanese sects. End footnote On the other hand some of the 18 schools exceeded the variations permitted in Christianity and Islam by having different collections of the scriptures but at the same time of which we are treating these collections had not been reduced to writing they were of considerable extent compared with the Bible or Quran and they admitted later explanatory matter. The record of Buddha's words did not profess to be a miraculous revelation but merely a recollection of what had been said. It is therefore natural that each school should maintain that the memory of its own scholars had transmitted the most accurate and complete account and that tradition should represent the successive councils as chiefly occupied and reciting and sifting these accounts. It is generally common in schools with an existence during or shortly before the reign of Ashoka and that six others arose about the same period but subsequently to them. Footnote 565 The names are not quite the same in the various lists and it seems useless to discuss them in detail. See Deepavasa 5th 3948 Mahavasa 5th and in Race David's 1891 page 411 Rock Hill Life of the Buddha Chapter 6 Gagar Translation of Mahavasa Appendix B End Footnote Footnote 566 Dahemavatikas Rajagirikas Siddhatas Pubaselikas and Apra-Rajagirikas End Footnote The best materials for the study of the text and commentary of the Katha Vattu are treatise attributed to Tissa Mogaliputta who is said to have been president of the Third Council held under Ashoka. It is an examination and refutation of heretical views rather than a description of the bodies that held them but we can judge from it what was the religious atmosphere at the time and the commentary gives some information about various sects. These entries later, Aiching tells us that during his visit to India, 671-695 AD, the principal schools were four in number with 18 subdivisions. These four are the Mahasangikas, Dasthavira equivalent to the old Theravada the Mola Sarvasitivada and the Samitya and from the time of Ashoka onwards they threw the remaining divisions into the shade. Footnote 568 they must not be confused with the four philosophical schools Vibhashika, Sautranthika Yogakara and Madhyamika these came into existence later. Footnote 569 but the Vittul Yakaas were important in Ceylon. End footnote He adds that it is not determined which of the four should be grouped with the Mahayana and which with the Hinanaya distinction being probably later in origin. The differences between the 18 schools in Aiching's time were not vital but concerned the composition of the canon and details of discipline. It was a creditable thing to be worst in the scriptures of them all. Footnote 570 See Paramarthas Life of Vasabandhu Thongpao 1904 page 290 End footnote It is curious that though the Kathavattu spays more attention to the opinions of the six new sects than to those held by most of the 18 yet this later number continued to be quoted nearly a thousand years later whereas the additional sects seem forgotten. It may be that they were more unorthodox than the others and hence required fuller criticism. Five of their names are geographical designations but we hear no more of them after the age of Asoka. The religious horizon of the heretics confuted in the Kathavattu does not differ materially from that of the Pitakas. There are many questions about arhatship, its nature, the method of obtaining it and the possibility of losing it. Also we find registered divergent views respecting the nature of knowledge and sensation. Of these the most important is the doctrine attributed to the Samityas that a soul exists in the highest and truest sense. They are also credited with holding that an arhat can fall from arhatship that a god can enter the paths or the order and that even an unconverted man can get rid of all lust and ill will. Footnote 571 See wrist davids in J-R-A-S 1892 pages 8 to 9. The name is variously spelled. The pts print Samitya but the Sanskrit text of the Madhyama Kavritti in Biblical Buddhism has Samitya. Sanskrit dictionaries give Samitya. The Abhidharma section of the Chinese Sripatika, Nanjio 1272 contains a Shastra belonging to this school. Nanjio 1139 is apparently their Vinaya. And footnote this collection of beliefs is possibly explicable as a result of the view that the condition of the soul which is continuous from birth to birth is stronger for good or evil than its surroundings. The germs of the Mahayana may be detected in the opinions of some sex on the nature of the Buddha and the career of a Bodhisattva. Thus the Andakas thought that the Buddha was superhuman in ordinary affairs of life and the Vittulaikas held that he was not really born in the world of men but sent a phantom to represent him remaining himself in the Tussita heaven. Footnote 572 Kern, Versal, Enmed, Dead, Kei, Ekad, Van, Watanshapan, Leterg 4, R.D. 8, 1907 Pages 312 to 319 Confer J.R.A.S. 1907 Pages 432 Suggested on the authority of Kashingarian M.S.S. that the expression well-polya sutra is a misreading for Vittulya Sutra a sutra of the Vittulikas Hananda was sometimes identified with the phantom who represented the Buddha. End footnote The doctrines attributed to the Uttarapatakas andakas respectively that an unconverted man if good is capable of entering on the career of a Bodhisattva and that a Bodhisattva can in the course of his career fall into error and be reborn in state of woe, show an interest in the development of a Bodhisattva and a desire to bring it nearer to human life which are foreign to the pitakas. An inclination to think of other states of existence in a manner half mythological half metaphysical is indicated by other heresies such as that there is an intermediate realm where beings await rebirth that the dead benefit by gifts given in the world that there are animals in heaven that the four truths the chain of causation and the eightfold path are self-existence. Asan Khatha Footnote 573 It is remarkable that this view though condemned by the Khatha Vathu is countenanced by the Khudaka Patha End Footnote The point of view of the Khatha Vathu and indeed of the whole Pali Tripitaka is that of the Vibhaja Vahadans which seems to mean those who proceed by analysis and do not make vague generalizations. This was the school to which Tissa Mughaliputta belonged and was identical with the Theravada teaching of the elders or a section of it. The prominence of this sect in the history of Buddhism has caused its own view namely that it represents primitive Buddhism to be widely accepted and this view deserves respect for it rests on a solid historical basis namely that about two and a half centuries after the Buddha's death and in the country where he preached the Vibhaja Vahadans claim to get back to his real teaching by an examination of the teaching traditions. Footnote 574 The Khatha Vathu's constantly cites the Nikayas End Footnote This is a very early starting point but the Sarvasati Vahadans were also an early school which attained to widespread influence and had a similar desire to preserve the simple and comparatively human presentment of the Buddha's teachings as opposed to later Vibhaja Vahadans. Footnote 575 Pali Sabati Vahadans End Footnote Only three questions in the Khatha Vathu are directed against them but this probably means not that they were unimportant but that they did not differ much from the Vibhaja Vahadans. The special views attributed to them are that everything really exists that an Arhat can fall from Arhat ship and that constitutes Samadhi or meditation. These theses may perhaps be interpreted as indicative of an aversion to metaphysics and the supernatural. A saint has not undergone any supernatural transformation but has merely reached a level from which he can fall. Meditation is simply fixity of attention not a mystic trance. In virtue of the first doctrine, European writers often speak of the Sarvastivadans as realists but their peculiar view concerned not so much the question of objective reality as the difference between being and becoming. They said that the world is whereas other schools maintain that it was a continual process of becoming. Footnote 576 Confir the doctrine of the Sankhyas for more about the Sarvastivadans as we see below Book 4, Chapter 22 and Footnote It is not necessary at present to follow further the history of this important school. It had a long career and flourished in Kashmir and Central Asia. Confused as are the notices of these ancient sects we see with some clearness that in opposition to the Theravada there was another body alluded to in terms which still imply an admission of size and learning such as Mahasangika and Mahasangitika the people of the great assembly and Acharya Vada or the doctrine of the teachers. It appears to have originated in connection with some council and to embody a popular protest against the severity of the doctrine there laid down. This is natural for it is pretty obvious that many found the argumentative psychology of the Theravadans added and verisome. The Deepavamsa accuses the Mahasangikas of garbling the canon but the Chinese pilgrims testified that in later times their books were regarded especially complete. One well known work, the Mahavas too perhaps composed in the 1st century BC describes itself as belonging to Lokutara branch of the Mahasangikas. The Mahasangikas probably represent the elements which developed into Mahayana. It is not possible to formulate their views precisely but whereas the Theravada was essentially teaching for the Bhikkhu they represented those concessions to popular taste from which Buddhism has never been quite dissociated even in its earliest period. Part 2 For some 2 centuries after Gautama's death we have little information as to the geographical extension of his doctrine and some of the Sanskrit versions of Divinaya represent him as visiting Muttra, North West India and Kashmir. Footnote 577 see especially Leinard West Deleinde dance Levinaya the Mula Sarvastiva Dins by Przezylyski in J.A. 1914 2 pages 492 FF and footnote So far as is known the theory of this journey is not supported by more ancient documents or other arguments. It contains a prediction about Kanishka and may have been composed in or after his reign when the flourishing condition of Buddhism in Gandhar made it seem appropriate to glit the past. But the narratives about Muttra and Kashmir contain several predictions relating to the progress of the faith 100 years after the Buddha's death and these can hardly be explained except as references to a tradition that those regions were converted at the epoch mentioned. There is no doubt of the connection between Kashmir and Sarvastiva Dins nor anything improbable in the supposition that the first missionary activity was in the direction of Muttra and Kashmir. But the greatest landmark in the earlier history of Buddhism is the reign of Ashoka. He came to the throne about 270 B.C. and inherited the vast dominion of his father and grandfather. Almost all that we know of the political events of his reign is that his coronation did not take place until four years later which may indicate a disputed succession and that he rounded of his possessions by the conquest of Kalinga, that is the country between the Mahanadi and the Godavari about 261 B.C. This was the end of his military career. Nothing could be gained by further conquests for his empire already exceeded the limits set to effective government by the imperfect communications of the epoch, seeing that it extended from Afghanistan to the mouths of the Ganges and southwards almost to Madras. No evidence substantiates the later stories which represent him as a monster of wickedness before his conversion but according to Deepavasa he at first favored heretics. The general effect of Ashoka's rule on the history of Buddhism and indeed of Asia is clear but there is still some difference of opinion as to the date of his conversion. The most important document for the chronology of his reign is the inscription known as the first minor rock edict. Footnote 578 See articles by Fleed in JRAS 1903 1904 1908 to 1911 and 1914 Holch in JRAS 1910 to 1911 Thomas in JA 1910 S. Levy, JA 1911 End footnote It is now generally admitted that it does not state the time which has elapsed since the death of the Buddha as was once proposed and that the king relates in it how for more than two and a half years after his conversion to Buddhism he was a lay believer and did not exert himself strenuously but subsequently joined the Sangh and began to devote his energies to religion rather more than a year before the publication of the edict. Footnote 579 Ashoka's statement is confirmed if it needs confirmation that he was a lay-believer and then a monk who saw in India statues of him in monastic costume. End footnote This proclamation has been regarded by some as the first by others as the last of his edicts. On the latter supposition we must imagine that he published a long series of ethical but not definitively Buddhist ordinances and that late in life he became first a lay-believer and then a monk probably abdicating at the same time. But the king is exceedingly candid as to his changes of life and mind. He tells us how the horrors of the war with Kalinga affected him how he was an easygoing layman and then a zealous monk. Had there been a stage between the war and his acceptance of Buddhism as a layman a period of many years in which he devoted himself to the moral progress of his people without being himself a Buddhist, he would surely have explained it. Moreover, in the Babru Edict which is distinctly acelystical and deals with the Buddhist scriptures, he employs his favorite word Dhamma in the strict Buddhist sense without indicating that he is giving it an unusual or new meaning. I therefore think it probable that he became a lay Buddhist soon after the conquest of Kalinga that is in the 9th or 10th year after his accession and a member of the Sangha two and a half years later. On this hypothesis all his edicts are the utterances of a Buddhist. It may be objected that no one could be a monk and at the same time govern a great empire. It is more natural and more in accordance with Indian usage that towards the end of his life an aged king would abdicate and renounce the world. But Wu Ti, the Buddhist emperor of China, retired to a monastery twice in the course of his long reign and the cloistered emperors of Japan in the 11th and 12th centuries continue to direct the policy of their country although they abdicated in name and set a child on the throne as titular ruler. The Buddhist church was not likely to criticize Ashoka's method monastic vows and indeed it may be said that his activity was not so much that of a pious emperor as of an archbishop possessed of exceptional temporal power. He definitely renounced conquest and military ambitions and appears to have paid no attention to ordinary civil administration which he perhaps entrusted to commissioners. He devoted himself to philanthropic and moral projects for the welfare of man and beast, such as lecturing his subjects on their duties towards all living creature, governing the church, building hospitals in stupas, supervising charities and dispatching missions. In all his varied activity there is nothing unsuitable to an esleastical statesman. In fact he is distinguished from most popes and prelates by his real indifference to secular aspirations and by the unusual facilities which he enjoyed for immediately putting his ideals into practice. Ashoka has won immortality by the edicts which he caused to be engraved on stone. Footnote 580 for a bibliography of the literature about these inscriptions see Vincent Smith Early History of India 3rd edition 1914 pages 172 to 174 and footnote They have survived to the present day and are the most important monuments which we possess for the early history of India and of Buddhism. They have a character of their own. A French writer has said Aune, Bavar de Pasur Lapiere and for most inscriptions the saying holds good but Ashoka wrote on the rocks of India as if he were dictating to a stenographer. He was no stylist and he was somewhat vain although considering his imperial position and the excellence of his motives this obvious side of his character is excusable. His inscriptions give us a unique series of sermons on stones and a record if not of what the people of India thought at least of what an exceptionally devout and powerful Hindu thought they ought to think. Between 30 and 40 of these inscriptions have been discovered scattered over nearly the whole of India and composed in vernacular dialects allied to Pali. Footnote 581 the dialect is not strictly speaking the same in all the inscriptions. End footnote Many of them are dated by the ear of the king's reign and all announced themselves as the enactment of Piyadasi the name Ashoka being rarely used. Footnote 582 Piyadasi Sanskrit Priyadarshin the Deepavasa 6th, 1 and 14 calls Ashoka Piyadasi and Piyadasana. The name Ashoka has hitherto only been found in one edict discovered at Hyderabad JRAS 1960 page 573 End footnote They comprise besides some 14 single edicts 2 series, namely 1, 14 rock edicts dating from the 13th and 14th years of Ashoka's reign and found inscribed in 7 places but the recensions differ and some do not include all 14 edicts. 2, 7 pillar edicts dating from the 27th and 28 years and found in 6 recensions. Footnote 583 The principal single edicts are 1, that known as minor rock edict 1, found in 4 recensions 2, the bhabru or bhabra edict of great importance for the Buddhist scriptures 3, two Kalinga edicts 4, edicts about Shesham found at Sarnath and elsewhere 4 commemorative inscriptions in the Terai 5, Dedications of Caves Footnote 584 Ashoka came to the throne about 270 BC 268 or 272 according to various authorities but was not crowned until 4 years later Events are generally dated by the year after his coordination abhishek not after his accession End footnote The 14 rock edicts are mostly sermons I will often recall the pitaks verbally particularly in the application of secular words to religious matters Thus, we hear that righteousness is the best of lucky ceremonies and that whereas former kings went on tours of pleasure and hunting Ashoka prefers tour of piety and has set out on the road leading to true knowledge In the series he does not mention the Buddha and in the 12th edict he declares that he reverences all sects but what he wished to preach and enforce was the dhamma it is difficult to find an English equivalent for this word but there is no doubt of the meaning Footnote 585 I must confess that law of piety Vincent Smith does not seem to me very idiomatic End footnote It is the law in the sense of the righteous life which a Buddhist layman ought to live and perhaps religion is the simplest translation provided that word is understood to include conduct and its consequences in another world but not theism Ashoka burns with zeal to propagate this dhamma and his language recalls the utterances of dhammapada Footnote 586 See Senart inscription de piassi Second pages 314 FF End footnote He formulates the law under four heads Parents must be obeyed Respect for living creatures must be enforced Truth must be spoken The teacher must be reverenced by the pupil and proper courtesy must be shown to relations Footnote 587 The second minor rock edict End footnote In many ways the sacred edict of the Chinese emperor Kangxi resembles these proclamations for it consists of imperial maxims on public morality addressed by a Confucian emperor to a population partly Buddhist and Taoist just as Ashoka addressed Brahmins, Jains and other sects as well as Buddhists but when we find in the 13th rock edict the incidental statement that the king thinks nothing of much importance except what concerns the next world we feel great difference between Indian and Chinese ideas whether ancient or modern The rock edicts also deal with the sanctity of animal life Ashoka's strong dislike of killing or hurting animals cannot be ascribed to policy for it must have brought him into collision with the Brahmins in sacrifice but was the offspring of a naturally gentle and civilized mind we may conjecture that the humanity of Buddhism was a feature which attracted him to it in rock edict 1 he forbids animal sacrifices and informs us that whereas formally many thousand animals were killed daily for the royal kitchens now only three are killed namely two peacocks and a deer and the deer not always but in future even these three creatures will not be slaughtered in rock edict 2 he describes how he has scared for the comfort of man and beast wells have been dug trees, roots and healing herbs have been planted and remedies possibly hospitals have been provided all for animals as well as for men and this not only in his own dominions but in neighboring realms in the 14th year of his reign he appointed officers called Dhamma Mahatma ministers or censors of the Dhamma their duty was to promote the observance of the Dhamma and they also acted as charity commissioners and superintendents of the households of the kings relatives we hear that they attend to charitable institutions, ascetics soldiers and all the sects I have also arranged that they shall attend to the affairs of the Buddhist clergy as well as the Brahmins the Jains the Ajivikas and in fact all the various sects further he tells us that the local authorities are to hold quin quiniel assemblies at which the Dhamma is to be proclaimed and that religious processions with elephants cars and illuminations have been arranged to please and construct the people similar processions can still be seen at the Parahera festival in Kandy footnote 588 Rajuka and Pradesika and footnote the last rock edict is of special interest for the light which it sheds both on history and on the king's character he expresses remorse for the bloodshed which accompanied the conquest of Kalinga and declares that he will henceforth devote his attention to conquest by the Dhamma which he has affected both in his own dominions and in all the neighboring realms as far as 600 leagues even to where the Greek king named Antiochus dwells and beyond that Antiochus to where dwell the four kings named Tolemy Antigonus, Magus and Alexander and in the south the kings of the Cholas and Pandias and of Ceylon and likewise here in the king's dominions among the Jonas and Cambodias in Nabhaka of the Nabhites among the Bhojas and Pitinakas among the Andras and Pulindas footnote 589 i.e. Syria Egypt, Macedonia Cyrene and Epirus footnote 590 kingdoms in the south of India footnote 591 the inhabitants of the extreme northwest of India not necessarily Greeks by race footnote 592 possibly Tibet footnote 593 or Nabhapamthi in any case unknown footnote 594 all these appear to have been tribes of central India and footnote Ashoka thus appears to state that he has sent missionaries to first the outlying parts of India on the borders of his own dominions two to Ceylon three to the Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia, Africa and Europe this last statement is of the greatest importance but no record has hitherto been found of the arrival of these missionaries in the west the language of the edict about them is not precise and in fact their dispatch is only an inference from it of the success of the Indian missions there is no doubt Buddhism was introduced into India where it flourished to some extent though it had to maintain a double struggle against Jains as well as Brahmins the statement of the Deepa and Mahavasa that missionaries were also sent to Pegu, Suvarnabhumi is not supported by the inscriptions though not in itself improbable but the missions to the north and to Ceylon were remarkably successful the Sinhalese chronicles give the names of the principal missionaries dispatched and their statements have received confirmation in the discoveries made at Sachi and Sonari where urns have been found inscribed with the names of Majima Kasapa and Gotiputta the successor of Dhundubhisara who are called teachers of the Himalaya region footnote 595 Deepavasa 8 Mahavasa 12 end footnote the statement in the Maha and Deepavasa is that Majima was sent to Preach in the Himalaya accompanied by four assistants Kasapa Malikadeva Dhundha Bhinosa and Sahasadeva about the 21st year of his reign Ashoka made a religious tour and under the guidance of his preceptor Upgupta visited the Lumbini Park now Remendai in the Terai where the Buddha was born and other spots connected with his life in Preaching A pillar has been discovered at Remendai bearing an inscription which records the visit and the privileges granted to the village where the Lord was born At Nigliva a few miles off he erected another inscribed pillar stating that he had done reverence to the stupa of the earlier Buddha Kornagamana and for the second he repaired it During this tour he visited Nepal and Lalitpur the capital founding their five stupas His daughter Charumati is said to have accompanied him and to have remained in Nepal when he returned She built a convent which still bears her name and lived there as a nun It does not appear that Ashoka visited Kashmir but he caused a new capital which produced Buddhism In the 27th and 28th year of his reign he composed another series of edicts and this time had them carved in pillars not on rocks They are even more didactic than the rock edicts and contain an increasing number of references to the next world as well as stricter regulations forbidding cruelty to animals but the king remained tolerant and says that the chief thing to his own creed footnote 596 pillar edict 6 end footnote it is probable that at this time he had partially abdicated or at least abandoned some of the work of administration for an edict 4 he states that he has appointed commissioners with discretion to award honors and penalties and that he feels secure like a man who has handed over his child to a skillful nurse In the two series of rock and pillar edicts there is little dogmatic Buddhism it is true that the king's anxiety as to the hereafter of his subjects and his solicitude for animals indicate thoughts busy with religious ideas but still his dhamma is generally defied in terms which do not go beyond morality, kindness and sympathy but in the bhabru edict he recommends for study a series of scriptural passage which can be identified more or less certainly with portions of the pali pitakas in the sarnath edict he speaks not only as a Buddhist but as head of the church he orders that monks or nuns who endeavor to create a schism shall put on a costume and live outside their former monastery or convent he thus assumes the right to expel schismatics from the sangha he goes on to say that a similar edict i.e. an edict against schism is to be inscribed for the benefit of the laity who are to come and see it on uposatha days and on the uposatha days in all months every officer is to come for the uposatha service to be inspired with confidence in this edict and to learn it the king's officers are to be Buddhists at least to the extent of attending the uposatha ceremony and the edict about schismatics is to be brought to the notice of the laity which doubtless means that the laity are not to give arms to them it is probable that many more inscriptions remain to be discovered but none of those known allude to the conveying of a council and our information as to this meeting comes from the two families chronicles and the works of buddha ghoj it is said to have been held 236 years after the death of the buddha and to have been necessitated by the fact that the favor shown to the sangha induced heretics to become members of it without abandoning their errors footnote 597 perhaps meant to be equivalent to 251 BC when smith rejects this date and thinks that the council met in the last 10 years of asoka's reign but this in hali's account is reasonable asoka was very pious but very tolerant 10 years of this regime may well have led to the abuse complained of and footnote this occasioned disturbances and the king was advised to summon a sage called tesha mogiliputta or upagupta then living in retirement and to place the affairs of the church in his hands he did so tesha then composed the katha vattu and presided over a council composed of 1000 arhats which established the true doctrine and fixed the present pali canon even so severe a critic of sinhali's tradition as vincent smith admits that the evidence for the council is too strong to be set aside but it must be confessed that it would be occurring to find some allusions to it in asoka's inscriptions he did not however always say what we should expect in reviewing his efforts in the cause of religion he mentions neither a council nor foreign missions although we know from other inscriptions that such missions were dispatched the sessions of the council may be equally true and are in no way improbable for in later times kings of berma, selon and siam held conventions to revise the text of the tripitaka it appeared natural that a pious king should see that the sacred law was observed and begin by ascertaining what that law was according to tradition asoka died after reigning 38 or 40 years but we have no authentic account of his death and the stories of his last days seem to be pure legends the most celebrated are the pathetic tale of kunal which closely resembles a jatak and the account of how asoka vowed to present a hundred million gold pieces to the sangha and not being able to raise the whole sum made a gift of his dominions instead footnote 598 jatak number 472 end footnote part 3 asoka had a decisive effect on the history of buddhism especially in making it a world religion this was not the accidental result of his action in establishing it in northwest india and selon for he was clearly dominated by the thought that the dhamma must be spread over the whole world and so far as we know he was the first to have that thought in a practical form but we could estimate his work better if we knew more about the religious condition of the country when he came to the throne as it is the periods immediately before after him are plunged in obscurity and to illuminate his reign we have little information except his own edicts which though copious do not aim at giving a description of his subjects megastinis who resided at partly putra about 300 bc does not appear to have been aware of the existence of buddhism as a separate religion but perhaps a foreign minister in china at the present day might not notice that the chinese have more than one religion on the other hand in Ashoka's time buddhism by whatever name it was called was well known and there was evidently no necessity for the king to explain what he meant by dhamma and sangha the buddha had belonged to a noble family and was esteemed by the aristocracy of magad the code of modality which he prescribed for the laity was excellent and sensible it is therefore not surprising if the shatriyas and others recognized it as their ideal nor if Ashoka found it a sound basis of legislation this legislation may be called buddhist in the sense that in his edicts the king enjoins and to some extent enforces selam or morality which is indispensable beginning for all spiritual progress and that his enactments about animals go beyond what is usual in secular law but he expressly refrains from requiring adherence to any particular sect on the other hand there is no lack of definite patronage of buddhism he institutes edifying processions he goes on pilgrimages to sacred sites he addresses the sangha as to the most important parts of the scriptures and we may infer that he did his best to spread the knowledge of those scriptures though he says nothing about it in the edicts which have been discovered he erected numerous religious buildings including the sachi taupe and the original temple at Bodh Gaya their effect in turning men's attention to buddhism must have been greatly enhanced by the fact that so far as we know no other sect had stone temples at this time to such influence we must add the human element the example of the noble and well known wishes of a great king supported by a numerous and learned clergy could not fail to attract crowds to the faith and the faith itself for let us not forget Gautama while we give credit to his follower was satisfying thus Ashoka probably found buddhism in the form of a numerous order of monks respected locally and exercising a considerable power over the minds and conduct of laymen left it a great church spread from the north to the south of India and even beyond with an army of officials to assist its progress with sacred buildings and monasteries sermons and ceremonies how long his special institutions lasted we do not know but no one acquainted with India can help feeling that his system of inspection was liable to grave abuse blackmailing and misuse of authority are ancient faults of the Indian police and we may surmise that the generations which followed him were not too long in getting rid of his senses and inspectors Christian critics of buddhism are apt to say that it has a paralyzing effect on the nations who adopted but Ashoka's edicts team with words like energy and strenuousness it is most necessary to make an effort in this world so he recounts the efforts which he has himself made and wants everybody else to make an effort work I must for the public benefit and the root of the matter is an exertion and dispatch of business than which nothing is more efficacious for the general welfare these sound like the words of a British utilitarian rather than of a dreamy oriental emperor he is far from pessimistic indeed he almost ignores the truth of suffering in describing the conquest of Kalinga he speaks almost in the buddha's words of the sorrow of death and separation but instead of saying that such things are inevitable he wishes his subjects to be told that he regrets what has happened and desires to give them security peace and joy Ashoka has been compared with Constantine but it has been justly observed that the comparison is superficial for Constantine more like Kanishka than Ashoka merely recognized and regulated a religion which had already won its way in his empire he has also been compared with saint paul and in so far as both men transformed a provincial sect into a religion for all mankind the parallelist just but it ends there saint paul was a constructive theologian for good or evil he greatly developed and complicated the teaching of Christ but the edicts of Ashoka if compared with the pitakas seem to curtail and simplify their doctrines no inscription has yet been found mentioning the four truths the chain of causation and other familiar formulae doubtless Ashoka duly studied these questions but it was not theology nor metaphysics which drew him towards religion in the gallery of pious emperors a collection of dubious moral and intellectual value which stands isolated as perhaps the one man whose only passion was for a sane kindly and humane life neither too curious of great mysteries nor preoccupied with his own soul but simply the friend of a man and beast for the history of doctrine the inscription at room in day is particularly important it merely states that the king did honor or reverence to the birthplace of the buddha who receives no titles except Sakyamuni and Bhagawan here or elsewhere in the inscriptions it is a simple record of respect paid to a great human teacher who is not in any way defied nor does Ashoka's language show any trace of the doctrines afterward known under the name of Mahayana he does not mention nirvana or even transmigration though doubtless what he says about paradise and rewards hereafter should be read in the light Indian doctrines about karma and samsara end of section 43 Hinduism and Buddhism and historical sketch vol. 1 by Charles Elliott Chapter 13 Chapter 13 The Canon there are extant in several languages large collections of buddhist scriptures described by some European writers as the Canon the name is convenient and not incorrect but the various canons are not altogether similar and the standard for the inclusion or exclusion of particular works is not always clear we know something of four or five canons one the Pali Canon accepted by the Buddhists of Ceylon Burma and Siam and rendered accessible to European students by the Pali text society it professes to contain the works recognized as canonical by the Council of Ahsoka and it is reasonably homogenous that is to say although some ingenuity may be needed to harmonize the different strata of which it consists it does not include works composed by several schools two the Sanskrit Canon or canons A. Nepalese scriptures these do not correspond with any Pali texts and all belong to the Mahayana there appears to be no standard for fixing the canonical character of Mahayana's works like the Upanishads they are held to be revealed from time to time B. Buddhist texts discovered in Central Asia hitherto these have been merely fragments but the number of manuscripts found and not yet published permits the hope their texts may be forthcoming those already made known are partly Mahayana and partly similar to the Pali Canon though not a literal translation of it it is not clear to what extent the Buddhists of Central Asia regarded the Hina and Mahayana scriptures as separate and distinct probably each school selected for itself a small collection of texts as authoritative the Chinese Canon this is a gigantic collection of Buddhist works made and revised by order of various emperors the imperial imprimatur is the only standard of canonicity the contents include translations of works belonging to all schools made from the first to the 13th century A.D. the originals were apparently all in Sanskrit and were probably texts of which fragments have been found in Central Asia this Canon also includes some original Chinese works 4. there is a somewhat similar collection of translations into Tibetan but whereas the Chinese Canon contains translations dated from 67 A.D. onwards the Tibetan translations were made mainly in the 9th and 11th centuries represent a literature esteemed by the medieval Buddhism of Bengal part at least of this Tibetan Canon has been translated into Mongol renderings of various books into Ugyur, Sogdian, Kuchines, Nordirish and other languages of Central Asia have been discovered by recent explorers it is probable that they are all derived from the Sanskrit Canon and do not represent any independent tradition the scriptures used in Japan and Korea are simply special editions of the Chinese Canon, not translations in the following pages I propose to consider the Pali Canon postponing until later an account of the others it will be necessary however to touch on the relations of Pali and Sanskrit texts the scriptures published by the Pali text society represent the Canon of the ancient sect called Vibhajavadins and the particular recension of it used at the monastery in Anadrapura called Mava Vahara it is therefore not incorrect to apply to this recension such as epithets as Southern or Sinhalese provided we remember that in its origin it was neither one nor the other for the major part of it was certainly composed in India it was probably introduced into Ceylon in the third century BC and it is also accepted in Burma, Siam and Cambodia thus in a considerable area it is the soul and undisputed version of the scriptures the Canon is often known by the name of Tripataka or three baskets when an excavation was made in ancient India it was the custom to pass up the earth in baskets along a line of workmen and the metaphorical use of the word seems to be taken from this practice and to signify transmission by tradition the three patakas are known as Vinaya, Sutta and Abhidhamma Vinaya means discipline and the works included in this division treat chiefly of the rules to be observed by the members of the Sangha the basis of these rules is the Patamoka the ancient confessional formula enumerating the offenses which a monk can commit it was read periodically to a congregation of the order and those guilty of any sin had to confess it the text of the Patamoka is in the Vinaya combined with a very ancient commentary the Sutta Vibhanga the Vinaya also contains two treatises known collectively as the Kandakas but more frequently cited by their separate names as Mahavaga and Kullavaga the first deals with such topics as the rules for admission to the order and observance of fast days and in treating of each rule it describes the occasion on which the Buddha made it and to some extent follows the order of chronology for some parts of the master's life it is almost a biography the Kullavaga is similar in construction but less connected in style the Vinaya contains several important and curious narratives and is a mind of information about the social conditions of ancient India and its literary value as the book of Leviticus of greater general interest is the Sutta Pataka in which the sermons and discourses of the Buddha are collected Sutta is equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sutra literally a thread which signifies among the Brahmins a brief rule or aphorism but in Pali a relatively short poem or narrative dealing with a single object Sutta Pataka is divided into five collections called Nakayas the first four are mainly in prose and contain discourses attributed to Gautama or his disciples the fifth is mostly in verse and more miscellaneous the four collections of discourses bear the names of Diga Majima, Samuta and Angutaira the first meaning long four narratives they are not all sermons and are a varying character antiquity and interest the reason why they are grouped together being simply their length in some of them we may fancy that we catch an echo of Gautama's own words but in others the legendary character is very marked thus the Mahasamaya and Atanitya Sutas are the epitomies of popular mythology and history of the Buddha but for all that they are interesting and ancient many of the sutas especially the first thirteen are rearrangements of old materials put together by a considerable literary artist who lived many generations after the Buddha the account of the Buddha's last days is an example of such a compilation which attains the proportions of a gospel and shows some dramatic power though it is marred by the juxtaposition of passages composed in very different styles the Majahima Nakaya is a collection of 152 discourses of moderate Majahima length taken as a whole it is perhaps the most profound and impassioned of all the Nakayas and also the oldest the sermons which it contains if not verbatim reports the Sama's eloquence have caught the spirit of one who urged with insistent earnestness the importance of certain difficult truths and the tremendous issues dependent on right conduct and right knowledge the remaining collections the Samyata and Angutara classify the Buddha's utterances under various headings and presuppose older documents which they sometimes quote the Samyata consists of a great number of suttas mostly short, combined in groups treating of a single subject which may be either a person or a topic the Angutara which is a still longer collection is arranged in numerical groups a method of classification dear to the Hindus who delight in such computations as the four meditations the eightfold path the ten fetters can be counted this way and arranges them under the numbers from one to eleven thus under three it treats of thought, word, and deed and the applications of this division to morality of the three messengers of the gods old age, sickness, and death of the three great evils lust, ill will, and stupidity and so on the fifth or Kudaka Nakaya is perhaps the portion of the Pali scriptures which has found most favor with Europeans for the treatises composing it are short and some of them of remarkable beauty they are in great part composed of verses sometimes disconnected couplets sometimes short poems the stanzas are only imperfectly intelligible without an explanation of the occasion to which they refer this is generally forthcoming but is sometimes a part of the accepted text and sometimes regarded as merely a commentary to this division of the Pataka belong the Dhammapada a justly celebrated anthology of devotional verses and the Sutta Nupata a very ancient collection of suttas chiefly in meter other important works included in it are the Tira and the Tiragata or poems written by monks and nuns respectively and the Dattaka or stories about the Buddha's previous births some of the rather miscellaneous contents of this Nakaya are late and do not belong to the same epoch of thought as the discourses attributed to Gotama such are the Buddha Vamsa or lives of Gotama or ancestors the Kariya Pataka a selection of Jattaka stories about Gotama's previous births and the Vimana and Pettavathas accounts of celestial mansions and of the distressful existence led by those who are condemned to be ghosts though some of the works comprised in this Nakaya for example the Sutta Nupata are very ancient the collection as it stands is known only to the southern church the contents of it are not quite the same in Silan, Burma and Siam and only a small portion of them has been identified in the Chinese Tripitaka nevertheless the word Paniasa Nakayika one who knows the five Nakayas is found in the inscriptions of Sanchi and five Nakayas are mentioned in the last books of the Kulavaga thus a fifth Nakaya of some kind must have been known fairly early the third Pataka is known by the name Abhidhamma Dhamma is the usual designation for the doctrine of the Buddha and the Buddhagosa explains the prefix Abhi as signifying excess and distinction so that this Pataka is considered preeminent because it surpasses the others this preeminence consists solely in method and scope not a novelty of matter or charm of diction the point of view of the Abhidhamma is certainly later than that of the Sutta Pataka and in some ways marks an advance for instead of professing to report the discourses of Gotama it takes the various topics on which he touched especially the psychological ethics and treats them in a connected and systematic manner the style shows some semblance to Sanskrit Sutras for it is so technical both in vocabulary and arrangement that it can hardly be understood without a commentary according to tradition the Buddha recited the Abhidhamma when he went to heaven to preach to the gods and this seems a polite way of hinting that it was more than any human congregation could tolerate or understand still throughout the long history of Buddhism it has always been respected as the most profound portion of the scriptures and has not failed to find students this Pataka includes the Katha Vathu attributed to Tissa Magraputta who is said to have composed it about 250 BC in Asoka's reign 3 lines of growth are clearly discernible in the Vinaya and Sutta Pataka as already mentioned the Kedaka Nakaya is as a collection later than the others although separate books of it such as the Sutta Napata especially the fourth and fifth books are among the earliest documents which we possess but other books such as the Peta and the Vimana Vathu show a distinct difference in tone and are probably separated from the Buddha by several centuries of the other four Nakayas the Sumuta and Angutara are the more modern and the Angutara mentions Munda, king of Magadha who began to reign about 40 years after the Buddha's death but even in the two older collections the Diga and the Majima we have not reached the lowest stratum the first 13 Suttantas of the Diga all contain a very ancient tractate on morality and the Samariphala and the Samariphala and following sections of the Diga and also some Suttas of the Majima 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 a list of offences called the Pakatimoka the Mahavaga contains a portion of an ancient word for word explanation of this code and most of the Sutta Vibhanga is an amplification and exposition of it the Pate Moka was already in existence when these books were composed for we hear that if in a company of Bakus the Pate Moka should be sent to some better instructed monastery to learn it and further we hear that a learned Baku was expected to know not merely the precepts of the Pate Moka 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 sider of a Sutta simply adopts the style of a village storyteller thus have I heard once upon a time the Lord was dwelling at Rijaga or wherever it was and such a 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 Kulavaga states that the Vinaya but not the other Pitakas was recited and verified at the council of Vasili as I have mentioned elsewhere Sinilees and Chinese accounts speak of another council the Masanga or the Masangiti 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 Sinilees tradition states that the canon as we now have it was fixed at the third council held at Pataliputra in the reign of Ahsoka about 272 to 232 BC the most precise statements about this council are those of the Budugosa 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 BC is afforded by the Babru or Babra Edict of Ahsoka he recommends the clergy to study seven passages of which nearly all can be identified in the tradition of the Pitakas this Edict is not proved that Ahsoka had before him in the form which we know the Diga and other were excited but the most cautious logic must admit that there was a collection of the Buddhist 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 Ahsoka neither Ahsoka nor the author of the Katha Vathu cites books by name the latter for instance quotes the well-known lines Anubhina Madhavi not as coming from the Dhammapada but as spoken by the Lord but the author of the questions of Melinda who knew the canonical books and 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 Nakhayas by name the titles of many sutras and also the Vibhanga Datakatha, Pugala Panathi Katha Vathu, Yamaka and Pathanya everything indicates the conclusion that this canon of the Vibhajadans was substantially fixed in the time of Ahsoka 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 Ahsoka 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 Sarvastava Dins compiled an Abhudama Pataka of their own apparently in the time of Kanishka and the Dharmagupta school also seems to have had its own version of the Pataka the date of the Pali Abhudama is very doubtful and I do not reject the hypothesis that it was composed in Ceylon for the Sinalis seem to have a special taste for such literature but there is no proof of this Sinalis origin according to Sinalis tradition all three Patakas were introduced into Ceylon by Mahinda in the reign of Ahsoka but only as oral tradition and not in a written form they received this latter about 20 BC as the result of a dispute between two monasteries the controversy is very obscure but it appears that the ancient foundation called Mahivara accepted as a canonical the fifth book of the Ivanaya called Piravaira whereas it was rejected by the new monastery called Abhiyajira the Sinalis chronicle Mahavasma says somewhat abruptly the wise monks had hitherto handed down the text of the three Patakas Pataka Ypali 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 Mahivara at which they committed to writing their own version of the canon included in the Piravaira this book forms an appendix to the Vinaya Pataka and in some verses printed at the conclusion is said to be the work of one Deepa it is generally accepted as a relatively late production composed in Ceylon if such a work was included in the canon of the Mahivaira we must admit the possibility that other portions of it may be Sinalis and not Indian but still the onus Prabhandi lies with those who maintain the Sinalis origin of any part of the Pali canon and two strong arguments support one 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 Vida which would be of no interest to the Sinalis secondly there is no Sinalis local color and no Sinalis legends have been introduced contrast with this the Deepa Havamsa both of which open with accounts of mythical visits paid by the Buddha to Ceylon in Ceylon versions of the scriptures other than that of the Mahivaira were current until the 12th century when uniformity was enforced by Parakama Bahu some of these for instance the Pataka of the Veda Liakas were decidedly heretical according to the standard of local orthodoxy but others probably presented variations of reading and arrangement rather than of doctrine Anasaki has compared with the perceived Pali text a portion of the Samyakta Gama translated by the Gundabra into Chinese he thinks that the original was the text used by the Abhiyagiri monastery and brought to China by Fai Xian the Sinalis ecclesiastical history Nakaya Sangara relates that 235 years after the Buddha's death nine heretical fraternities were formed who proceeded to compose scriptures of their own such as the Varuna Pataka and Angiliyama Pataka though this treatise is late circa 1400 AD its statements merit attention as showing that even an orthodox Ceylon tradition regarded the authorized Pataka as one of the 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 addition of the Mahivara as the best and we have no grounds for rejecting or suspecting this opinion according to tradition Buddha Gosha was well versed in Sanskrit but deliberately preferred the southern canon the Mahayana's Dr. Asanga cites texts found in the Pali version but not in the Sanskrit the monks of the Mahavahira 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 contained many more miraculous narratives than the Pali Vinaya end of section 44 recording by Lawrence Trask Mount Vernon, Ohio interfaceaudio.com section 45 of Hinduism and Buddhism in historical sketch volume 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Lawrence Trask Mount Vernon, Ohio interfaceaudio.com Hinduism and Buddhism and historical sketch volume 1 by Charles Elliott Chapter 13 4 European critics have rarely occasioned to discuss the credibility of Sanskrit literature for most of it is so poetic or so speculative that no such question arises but the Patakas 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 catalogs 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 obstruce 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 patakas 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 Kullavaga 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 error of authenticity in the suttas the strong side of Hindu memory is brought into play of consecutive history there is no question there is 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 and the recurring passages are 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 Ahsoka's Barubu 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 Angutara Nakaya the king's version is Sodama Klitalik Hasate the Pali is Sodamo Saratakao 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 principle words of the sermon at Benares give its purport with perfect clearness if they are taken as a mirror list without grammatical connection similarly I should imagine that the recurring paragraphs about progress in the holy life found in the early sutras of the Diga Nakaya 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 Gautama uttered it such documents as the Samana Fala Sutta and the Embatha Sutta probably give a good idea of this 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 who 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 like the historical value of the Patakas 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 Abhidhamap 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 20 heads and 6 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 Sanghani 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 part 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 Buddhist to a perfection which has never been excelled the Dhamma Pada is the best known specimen of this literature being an anthology it is naturally more suited for a quotation in sections than for continuous reading but its 25 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 Arhat's on various occasion the whole work combines literary beauty depth of thought and human being 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 favor with European readers than the detached and philosophic texts which simply preach self-conquest and aloofness in beauty but probably older is the Sutta Nupatta 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 Danya Sutta would be recited when they met together in a rest house set apart for their use on the outskirts of a village the Buddhist Suttas are interesting as being a special result of Gautama'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 not at all in the Sankhaya and Vedlanta Sutras but the Sutta Pataka 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 Pataka 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 Sankhara but then 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 Nakayas they write about the Gotama in new and fanciful ways but no acts of the apostles succeed the gospels though the Buddhist Suttas are usually generous 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 the Yajnavalkya appears and two others in which Ajasa Tathru and Pravayana Jivali 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 Samanyafala Sutta opens with a vivid description of the visit paid one night by Ajasutu to the Buddha 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 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 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 fervor which often marks the Suttas of the Majjima such as the descriptions of his struggle for truth the admonitions to the Rahula and the reproof administered to Satay five as mentioned above our Pali Canon is the recension of the Vibha Javadins 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 as the Sarva Stivedins Mahinajikas Mahishikas Damagatikas and Samhityas 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 inflections while preserving much of the original vocabulary the Abhuda allowed all men to learn his teaching in their own language and different schools are said to have written the scriptures in different dialects for example the Maha Zangikas in a kind of prakrit not further specified and the Maha Samhityas in Apaframsa 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 as mentioned above our Pali canon is the recension of the Vibhachava deans we know from the records of the Chinese pilgrims that other schools also had recensions of their own all of these recensions such as those of the Sarvastavidins Maha Vajingikas Mahisasakas Dhamma Guttakas and Samhityas 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 inflections well 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 for example the Masahangikas in a kind of prakrit not further specified and the Maha Samhityas in Abhafamsa when Sanskrit became the recognized vehicle for literary composition there would naturally be in India though in Nadansilon a tendency to rewrite books composed in other dialects 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 as 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 19th century 90% of the vocabulary of Bengali was Sanskrit and the grammatical construction Sanskritized as well though the literary language nowadays is less artificial it still defers 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 Purnya in the Deviadanya repeats what is found in Pali in the Samuta Nakaya and reappears in Sanskrit in the Vinaya of the Molasarvastavadin school the Chinese Tripitaka has been cataloged and we possess some information respecting the books which it contains though none of them have been edited in Europe thus we know something of the Sarvastavadin recension of the Abhidhamma like the Pali version of seven books of which one the Janyanya Prasannya by Kaccha Anaputra is regarded as the principle the rest being the names of the Buddha's immediate disciples tradition connects Katie and Anaputra with Kanishka's council this is not a very certain date but still the inference is that about the time of the Christian era the contents of the Abhidhamma were not rigidly defined the new recension was possible the Sanskrit manuscripts discovered in Central Asia include sutras from the Samayutka and Ekattara Agamas equivalent to the Samayuta and Anguttara Nakayas a considerable part of the Dharmapada fragments of the Suta Napata and the Pratamaksha of the Sarvastavadin school these correspond fairly well with the Pali text another recension and a somewhat different arrangement we have therefore here fragments of a Sanskrit version which must have been imported to Central Asia from Northern India and covers so far as the fragments permit us to judge the same ground as the vanaya and sutras of the Pali canon far from displaying the diffuse and inflated style which characterize the Mahayana texts it is sometimes shorter and simpler than our Pali version when was this version composed and what is its relation to the Pali a definite reply would be premature for other Sanskrit texts may be discovered in Central Asia but two circumstances connect this early Buddhist literature in Sanskrit with the epoch of Kanishka firstly the Sanskrit Abhidharma of the Sarvastavadins seems to date from his council and secondly a Buddhist drama by Asvagosha of about the same time represents the Buddha as speaking in Sanskrit whereas the inferior characters speak Precret but these facts do not prove that Sanskrit was not the language of the canon at an earlier date and it is not safe to conclude that because Ahsoka did not employ it for writing edicts it was not the sacred language of any section of Indian Buddhists on the other hand some of the Sanskrit texts contain indications that they are a translation from Pali or some vernacular in others are found historical illusions which suggest they must have received edicts after our era I have already raised the question of the relative value attaching to Pali and Sanskrit texts as authorities for early history two instances will perhaps illustrate this better than a general discussion as already mentioned the Vinaya of the Mullah Sarvastivadins makes the Buddha visit north-western India and Kashmir whereas the Pali texts do not represent him as traveling further west than the country of the Kurus the Sanskrit account is not known to be confirmed by more ancient evidence but there is nothing impossible in it particularly as there are periods in the Buddha's long life filled by no incidents the narrative however contains a prediction about Kanishka and therefore cannot be earlier than his reign now there is no reason why the Pali texts should be silent about this journey if the Buddha really made it but one can easily imagine reasons for inventing it in the period of the Kushan kings north-western India was then full of monasteries sacred sites and the same spirit which makes uncritical Buddhists in Ceylon assert today that the master visited their country impelled the monks of Peshawar and Kashmir to imagine a not improbable extension of his wanderings on the other hand the same Vinaya of the Mullah Sarvastivadins probably gives us a fragment of history when it tells us that the Buddha had three wives when it relates how Rahula's paternity was called in question and how Devidara wanted to marry Yosidara after the Buddha had abandoned worldly life the Pali Vinaya and also some Sanskrit Vinayas mention only one wife or none at all they do not attempt to describe Gautama's domestic life and if they make no allusion to it except to mention the mother of Rahula this is not equivalent to an assertion but when one Vinaya composed in the north of India essays to give a biography of the Buddha and states that he had three wives there is no reason for doubting that the compiler was in touch with good local tradition end of section 45 recording by