Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c29.s1.4

v2.c29.s1.4

In those days, when writing was hardly used for putting on record the sayings and discourses of Buddha, the means for preserving and handing them down to posterity was recitation and memorization. This was akin to the method that had been in vogue in India from the earliest Vedic period, which also gave rise to the different Vedic schools. A similar cause produced a similar result among the Buddhists and we find that the memorizing of different portions of the Piṭaka was entrusted to different sets of bodies hardened and separated from one another in course of time and bearing names descriptive of their functions.¹