A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s1.16

v2.c19.s1.16

According to the report of the chronicles of Ceylon, a real canon of sacred texts was compiled on the occasion of the third Council, at the time of the famous King Aśoka. It is certain that, at that time, the Buddhist community was already divided into a number of schools or sects.³ For this reason it is not at all unlikely that the need for compiling a canon of texts for orthodox believers, *i.e.*, those who wished to be regarded as the adherents of the original doctrine of Buddha, was felt. Moreover, it is likely enough that a compilation of this kind should have been made precisely during the reign of King Aśoka, the great patron and adherent of the Buddhist community, for, in one of his edicts, the king himself decrees that heretical monks and nuns shall be excommunicated.[^1) Consequently, it would have been only natural for him to take an active interest in establishing what tenets constituted the true religion of Buddha. On the other hand, we find no mention in any of his numerous edicts of a council to determine the canon. It is true that he would have had no reason for so doing, because, even according to the tradition, it was not the king himself, but the learned monk Tissa Moggaliputta who, 236 years after the death of Buddha, convened an assembly of a thousand monks in the city of Pāṭaliputra (Patna), with the object of compiling a canon of texts of the true religion or the Theravāda, *i.e.*, the "doctrine of the elders," the immediate disciples of Buddha. The school of the Vibhajjavādins,[^2) to which Tissa, the President of the council, belonged, adhered to this Theravāda, and it is the canon of this school which was compiled during the nine months' session of the Council of Pāṭaliputra. Tradition has it, too, that Tissa also compiled the "Kathāvatthu," a book refuting all the heretical doctrines of those times, and incorporated it with the canon.