Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c6.s1.15

c6.s1.15

This conclusion is strengthened, in the opinion of those who hold it, by the tradition, not recorded until the fifth century A.D. in the commentators Dhammapāla and Buddhaghosa, that the Kathāvatthu in the Abhidhamma Piṭaka was composed by Tissa, son of Moggalī, at the court of Asoka at Pāṭaliputra in the middle of the third century B.C.¹ As such a tradition contradicts the view, asserted then to be current, that all the Canon was held to be the work of the Buddha, it is urged that the tradition must have been of overwhelming weight so as to overcome the scruples of the commentators. But the commentators escape the difficulty by accepting the authorship of the Buddha and ascribing a subordinate rôle to Tissa, and it is a delusion to imagine that their mention of that sage must have been based on tradition. For he is part and parcel of the Third Buddhist Council held, according to the Ceylonese tradition, under Asoka, approximately in 247 B.C., and of that Council, at which the Abhidhamma Piṭaka took final shape according to the same authorities, we have no other information. It is incredible that it ever took place without receiving some mention in the numerous records of Asoka; the efforts of those² who try to find a place in Asoka’s reign for the Council at such a time as to explain his silence are mistaken attempts to justify a tradition, the antiquity of which is wholly uncertain, but which is first recorded six centuries after the event whose happening it asserts. The desire to save the credibility of the Council has indeed led Mr. Vincent Smith to a paradox; he admits candidly that the Ceylonese date, sixteen or eighteen years after the consecration of Asoka, must be erroneous, since, if it had then met, it must have been recorded in the seventh Pillar Edict which reviews all the internal measures taken up to that date by the sovereign for the promotion of the law of piety. He admits further that any attempt to reconstruct a narrative of the actual proceedings of the Council is hopeless, in view of the conflict of traditions, and he recognizes³ that the Council of Vaiçālī is a figment. Yet, in face of these facts, he throws over the Ceylonese date in an effort to preserve the Council. Unless Asoka’s Council is formally revealed to us by an inscription yet to be discovered, the only verdict of scientific history must be that the Council was a figment of the pious or fraudulent imaginings of a sect, which desired to secure for its texts, and especially for the new Abhidhamma, a connexion with the greatest of Buddhist sovereigns, and that the northern tradition does well to ignore the Council entirely. Tissa himself, son of Moggali, bears a suspicious aspect¹; his name seems to be reminiscent of Upatissa, alias Sāriputta, and Moggallāna, the dearly beloved disciples of the Buddha, and independent authority for his existence there is absolutely none. His legend may be founded on the existence of some teacher of eminence in Asoka’s time; a Moggaliputta is mentioned on a Stūpa at Sānchi,² a fact which absurdly has been hailed as evidence of the historical existence and activity of Tissa. Equally absurd is his identification³ with the Upagupta of the northern tradition, for we have copious information regarding that sage and not a word of the alleged Council, so that we are asked to assume that the northern legends preserved faithfully his reputation, but omitted the most important happening of his life.