Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c2.13

c2.13

natural assumption but has been very ably established by Sinhalese tradition also asserts that during the process of transhe Old Sinhalese language and retranslation into Pāli of the that it was only the prose which was open to this process, were preserved unchanged in Pāli. And it is only these Gāthās, which were included in the Canon whenever it was compiled.² tradition says that the canonical texts were first transmitted under the Sinhalese king Vaṭṭagāmaṇī, in the first century were committed to writing, and this, according to Dr. Winterquite trustworthy.³ Originally both prose and verse of the ne down orally; but naturally the prose had a less stable form rse, being more exposed to changes and enlargements, so that ion was composed, and subsequently when it was written down, entury B.C. as noticed above, only the verses retained their oriwhereas the rendering of the prose was at first entrusted to the could recite the verses more faithfully than the prose, and it later period committed to writing by Commentators.⁴ As Mr. as, the Jātakas as a collection of selected verses go back to very Buddha if not earlier still.⁵ "...And their antiquity the possibility of a prose interpretation in the light of their ing them from the very beginning. Though there is ample Wort of the fact that, ancient Indian literature was in verse, called Akkhānas,⁶ the Buddha, who is said to have enjoined to use them in practical life, could not have entirely done application and, in the absence of developed Buddhist litee has recourse to such passages from these Akkhānas as the propagation of his Doctrine of Ahimsā and Kamma his own interpretations for safeguarding against the influx