Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s7.2

c12.s7.2

The early Buddhist texts, in spite of the ecclesiastical violence of different ages, seem to have preserved some authentic traditions of the pre-Aśokan times. They contain, to a limited extent, the picture of the religion as practised in those days and also of the struggle that was going on between Buddhism and the opposing sects. But this does not mean that the entire Buddhist canon in its present form can be used as a source of information for the period in question. The Buddhist traditions would have us believe that the first two collections of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka namely the Sūtrapiṭaka with its five *nikāyas* and the Vinayapiṭaka were brought together in the council of Rājagṛha, held immediately after the death of Buddha and that the third collection, the Abhidharmapiṭaka assumed its final form in the time of Aśoka, in the third council held at Pāṭaliputra. But this claim has been proved to be too exaggerated to be naively accepted. The Aśokan edicts show that the Buddhist canon was then in the making and not a full-fledged Tripiṭaka. In the Bhabru edict, Aśoka specially recommends to the Saṅgha a number of religious texts with the following instruction : ‘I desire that many groups of monks and nuns may repeatedly listen to these expositions of the Dharma (dhamma-paliyāyāni) and reflect on them. In the same way both laymen and laywomen (should act)’.