vented. In Kanishka's reign, four hundred years after Buddha, the Church was split up into eighteen sects, and a third council had to issue a third Revision of the Sacred Texts.[1]
All this is not to be taken as literally true. Especially is it impossible to accept the story that a Text of the Buddha's precepts and lectures was formed immediately after his death. It is probable that not even the earliest parts of the Tripitaka were committed to writing till long after that event, and it is quite certain that its later elements could not have been added till some centuries after it. Nevertheless, they may be, and indeed it is almost beyond doubt that there are, some works in this Canon which were already current as the Word of Buddha in the time of Asoka, who reigned in the third century before Christ. In an inscription quoted by Burnouf, and indisputably emanating from that monarch, it is stated that the law embraces the following topics:—"The limits marked by the Vinaya, the supernatural faculties of the Ariyas, the dangers of the future, the stanzas of the hermit, the Sutra of the hermit, the speculation of Upatisa (Sariputtra) only, the instruction of Laghula (Rahula), rejecting false doctrines. This," adds the proclamation, "is what has been said by the blessed Buddha" (Lotus, p. 725). In this enumeration we recognize, as Burnouf has observed, the classes Vinaya and Sutra, which still form two out of the three baskets, and we find also that certain texts were accepted by the Church as containing the genuine teaching of the Buddha. We must suppose, therefore, that at the epoch of the Council held under Asoka in B. C. 246, there were already many unquestioned works in circulation. Nor is there any reason to doubt that some of these have descended to our times. Burnouf divides the Sutras (in the more general sense of instructions or sermons) into two kinds: simple, and developed Sutras, of which the simple ones bear marks of antiquity and of fairly representing primitive Buddhism, while the developed Sutras contain the fanciful speculations of a later age.
Two most fortunate discoveries, the one made by Mr. Hodgson in Nepaul, the other by Csoma Körösi in Thibet, have placed the vast collection forming the Canon of Buddhism
- ↑ Southern Buddhists fix the dates of these General Counsels somewhat differently.
