Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c6.s1.49

c6.s1.49

The place of the production of the Pali Canon is uncertain; it comes to us as that of the Vibhajjavādin school of the Mahāvihāra of Ceylon; and its connexion with Ceylon is recognized in Sanskrit texts. But that is not to say that the Pali Canon was redacted in Ceylon; we need credit the Ceylonese tradition of the early conversion of the people to Buddhism as little as we do any other part of its legends. We may, therefore, treat the Canon as the work of an Indian school, and note the Ceylonese tradition recording its reduction to writing² under Abhaya Vaṭṭagāmani, perhaps at the close of the first century B. C., as perhaps applicable to the two older Piṭakas, though not necessarily in their present form in detail; certainly not in the case of the Jātaka book. It is a different question whether the Abhidhamma Piṭaka was a product of Ceylon; there is nothing to prove its northern origin, and accordingly the matter must remain open, in view of our almost total ignorance of the facts on which a conclusion of value could be framed.