Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c33.s1.2

v2.c33.s1.2

In the *Dīpavaṃsa*,¹ it is stated that they did not stop at introducing only the ten new Vinaya rules but went further and propounded new doctrines contrary to the established ones. At the Mahāsaṅgīti held by them, in reciting the Sūtras and the Vinaya, they made alterations in the texts, their arrangement and interpretations. They replaced portions of the text by others according to their liking, and even rejected certain parts of the canon though they had been accepted in Mahākassapa’s council. They did not include in the Piṭaka collection,² *Parivāra*, *Abhidhammappakaraṇa*, *Paṭisambhidā*, *Niddesa*, and the *Jātakas*. The importance and accuracy of the decision by which the Mahāsanghikas discriminated between the original portions and the later interpolations are found in the full support that the decision obtains from modern researches bearing out their discrimination in *toto*. The *Parivāra* (*pāṭha*), meant as a manual for the bhikkhus, is no doubt a composition of a date much later than that of the Canon.³ The Abhidhamma literature also developed after the Council of Vesālī and obtained its final shape in Aśoka’s Council.⁴ Lastly the three works, the *Paṭisambhidā*, the *Niddesa* and the *Jātakas* too have been added to the Canon without much discrimination and evidently long after its close. In view of the contents, it would have been proper if the *Paṭisambhidā* had been included in the *Abhidhamma* collection, and the *Niddesa*, an old commentary on the *Sutta Nipāta*, along with the *Jātakas* which is a commentary on the canonical Jātaka book, had been altogether excluded from the Piṭaka collection.