A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.351

v2.c19.s3.t2.351

The commentator of the Buddhavaṃsa says that the work was proclaimed and recited by Gotama Buddha himself, and was handed down an uninterrupted line of Theras, to the time of the third Council, and again, since then, passed down an uninterrupted line of teachers and pupils. As the earlier texts are only familiar with 6 predecessors of Gotama, we shall not give credence to these statements of the commentator, but shall be compelled to class the Buddhavaṃsa among the latest productions of canonical Pāli literature. Moreover, it is replete with that Buddha-worship and Buddha-deification, which is foreign to the earliest texts of the Tipiṭaka, but is at its height in the Buddhist Sanskrit literature, especially that of the Mahāyāna.