Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c6.s2.4

c6.s2.4

matter, some old in part at least, like the Suttanipāta, Udāna, Thera- and Therī-gāthās, Dhammapada, and Itivuttaka, some new like the Peta and Vimāna-vatthu, the Buddhavansa, Apadāna, and Cariyāpiṭaka; the Abhidhamma is clearly a late and deliberate working over of the Dhamma in its technical aspect. But the bulk of the Sutta Piṭaka and the Vinaya Piṭaka represents the same stage of ideas; they may have been redacted contemporaneously, and any attempt to trace strata of diverse ages involves a determination on other grounds of what elements should be early and what should be late. On the theory of Buddhist rationalism, we can decide that all the supernatural element is secondary, but we are faced with the insistent question whether we have any right thus to proceed. Granted that a preacher of a gospel of pure reason may be deified by some accident, it is at least certain that it is much more easy to deify an inspired seer who deems himself to be an embodiment of the divine, and that India in particular has been specially prone to accept as real such embodiments. If we reason a priori, and lay aside our natural desire to modernize and to find reason prevailing in a barbarous age, we should rather expect to find that the Buddha was one who was indeed human, but who at the same time felt himself to be, and was regarded by his followers as, something far superior to humanity, a great divinity in the eyes of his followers, a deity even to those who were not of the chosen circle. The conclusion is doubtless embarrassing to rationalism, but, if we are content to seek historical truth, we must be prepared to shed our personal predilections and to accept the conclusion which evidence indicates. The case for this view is greatly strengthened by the nature of the texts of the Pali Canon. The Vibhajyavādins were plainly prepared to rationalize as far as practicable;¹ as opposed to other schools they minimize the supernatural element in Buddhism, and the salient fact is that even in the records of these would-be rationalists we find abundant proof that the orthodox and prevalent view of the Buddha made him far removed from ordinary humanity.