Toh 1098 intro.19

intro.19

Some intriguing questions remain. Why was the set of verses that happen to match the Ratana-sutta selected from a wide-ranging original text to be reproduced in this extracted form at all? Did the tradition of using texts like this related to the Vaiśālī epidemic as blessings, protections, or dedications go far enough back in history to have predated the differentiation of the various early schools and Vinaya lineages, and to have subsequently survived in more than one? Or did these traditions arise independently in different places? Or were the editors, compilers, and keepers of the canonical texts in fourteenth century Tibet more aware of the significance that this particular set of verses had acquired in other Buddhist cultures than geographical separation might lead us to think? These questions are compounded, moreover, by the addition to the extract of the final four and a half stanzas, which seem to refer to a quite different application.