A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s1.9

v2.c19.s1.9

According to Buddhist tradition one such conclusion had already been made very early. It is recorded that, a few weeks after the death of Buddha, an assembly of the monks—the so-called first Buddhist Council—organised by the immediate disciples of Buddha, was held in the city of Rājagaha (the present Rajgir) in order to establish a canon of the religion (dhamma) and of the discipline of the order (vinaya).¹ The very fact that this report expects us to believe too much speaks against its trustworthiness in its oldest form, as it has come down to us in the Tipiṭaka itself ;² for, it is absolutely impossible that the two great sections of the Tipiṭaka which deal with the doctrine and the discipline of the order—Suttapiṭaka and Vinayapiṭaka—should soon after the death of Buddha have been essentially such as we find them in our Pāli canon.³ We need not, on this account, assume that the tradition is entirely unfounded. There is probably preserved in it a recollection of the not improbable fact that the elders of the community assembled immediately after the death of the master, in order to agree upon the principal points of the doctrine and of the discipline of the order.⁴ But surely too short a time had elapsed immediately after the death of Buddha for the compilation of a canon of sacred texts such as our Tipitaka. The tradition of a second council, which is supposed to have been held at Vesālī, a hundred years after the death of Buddha, is more credible. According to the older report,¹ however, the sole object of this gathering was to do away with ten heresies regarding the discipline of the order. Only the later reports² add that at the same time during a session of eight months a revision of the doctrine took place. If we keep to the earlier report, we may accept it as an historical fact that, about a hundred years after the passing of the Buddha, a schism occurred, which stirred up so much controversy that a great assembly of monks had to be summoned, to decide what should be regarded as right with reference to the debatable points. Now this pre-supposes that there was in existence at that time some criterion or other for the decision of such questions, and that could only have been some canon of precepts for the life of the monks such as we find in the Vinayapiṭaka. Hence, though the first century after Buddha may not have witnessed the formation of a canon, at least a fundamental stock of texts for such a canon must have been formed.