Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c6.s1.38.2

c6.s1.38.2

On the contrary the work shows the clearest signs, as Mrs. Rhys Davids' candidly allows, of much addition, which has deprived it of coherence or order. The admission is necessary in view of the obvious confusion of the work, and it deprives of all point the only serious attack made on Minayeff's criticism of the traditional origin of the Kathāvatthu; the inclusion in the text of a heresy known to have been held by the Vetulyakas in the second century A. D. in Ceylon and later does not prove that the work was only begun then, but it indicates that in all probability it was still open to additions in the second century A. D. and later. Moreover the theory that it is the latest of the Abhidhamma books is without foundation; it ignores three of them, Dhātukathā, Puggalapaññatti, and Yamaka. The scholastic character of these works suggests that they are divided by no small space from the other Piṭakas, and are very possibly younger than the older portion of the Milindapañha,² which refers to the Abhidhamma only in passages certainly late. The lateness of the Abhidhamma is confirmed also by the Ceylonese tradition itself. When it tells of the Great Council held by the heretical Vajjiputtakas, it says that they rejected the Abhidhamma books, along with the Paṭisambhidā and the Niddesa and portions of the Jātaka from the fifth Nikāya, and the Parivāra appendix of the Vinaya.