Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.12

c8.12

While in India itself the Buddhist texts experienced new fortunes from century to century, and while the ceremonies of the original Church were vanishing continually more and more behind the poetry and fiction of later generations, the Church of Ceylon remained true to the simple, homely, “ Word of the Ancients ” (Theravâda). The dialect itself in which it was recorded contributed to preserve it from corruptions, the language of the southern Indian territories, whose Churches and missions had naturally taken the largest share, if not the initiative, in the conversion of Ceylon.* This language of the texts (“ Pâli ”), imported from the south of India, is regarded in Ceylon as sacred : and it is there supposed that Buddha himself, and all Buddhas of preceding ages, had spoken it. Though the legends and speculations of later periods might find their way into the religious literature produced in the island and written in the popular tongue of Ceylon, the sacred Pâli texts remained unaffected by them.