..續本文上一頁im, was the same as that fixed by the First Council^[2].

　　 Several European students have adopted the same opinion, and, so far as I know, no argument has yet been advanced showing the impossibility of the native view, that some collection of Buddha”s doctrines was made immediately after his death at Râgagaha, and that it was finally settled at what is called the Second Council, or the Council of Vesâlî. But what is not impossible is not therefore true, nor can anything be gained by appealing to later witnesses, such as, for instance, Hiouen Thsang, who travelled through India in the seventh century, and wrote down anything that he could learn, little concerned whether one statement tallied with the other or not^[3]. He says that the Tipitaka was written down on palm leaves by Kâsyapa at the end of the First Council. But what can be the weight of such a witness, living more than a thousand years after the event, compared with that, for instance, of the Mahâvamsa, which dates from the fifth century of our era, and

　　[1. Bigandet, Life of Gaudama (Rangoon, 1866), p. 350; but also p. 120 note.

　　2. See Childers, s.v. Tipitaka. There is a curious passage in Buddhaghosa”s account of the First Council. ”Now one may ask,” he says, ”Is there or is there not in this first Parâgika anything to be taken away or added

　　” I reply, There is nothing in the words of the Blessed Buddha that can be taken away, for the Buddhas speak not even a single syllable in vain, yet in the words of disciples and devatâs there are things which may be omitted, and these the elders who made the recension, did omit. On the other hand, additions are everywhere necessary, and accordingly, whenever it was necessary to add anything, they added it. If it be asked, What are the additions referred to

　　 I reply, Only sentences necessary to connect the text, as ”at that time,” ”again at that time,” ”and so forth.”

　　3. Pèlerins Bouddhistes, vol. i. p. 158.]

　　p. xiii tells us in the account of Mahinda”s missionary journey to Ceylon (241/318), that the son of Asoka had to spend three years in learning the Tipitaka by heart from the mouth of a teacher^[1]

　　 No mention is then made of any books or MSS., when it would have been most natural to do so^[2]. At a later time, during the reign of King Vattagâmani^[3] (88-76 B.C.), the same chronicle, the Mahâvamsa, tells us that ”the profoundly wise priests had theretofore orally (mukhapâthena) perpetuated the Pâli of the Pitakattaya and its Atthakathâ (commentary), but that at this period the priests, foreseeing the perdition of the people assembled, and in order that the religion might endure for ages, recorded the same in books (potthakesu likhâpayum)^[4].”

　　 No one has yet questioned the dates of the Dîpavamsa, about 400 A.D., or of the first part of the Mahâvamsa, between 459-477 A.D., and though no doubt there is an interval of nearly 600 years between the composition of the Mahâvamsa and the recorded writing down of the Buddhist canon under Vattagâmani, yet we must remember that the Ceylonese chronicles were confessedly founded on an older Atthakathâ preserved in the monasteries of the island, and representing an unbroken line of local tradition.

　　 My own argument therefore, so long as the question was only whether we could assign a pre-Christian date to the Pâli Buddhist canon, has always been this. We have the commentaries on the Pâli canon translated from Sinhalese into Pâli, or actually composed, it may be…

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