Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.25

c8.25

of Buddha, or even the slightest trace of such a thing having been in existence before, and this alone is conclusive. The loss of texts, which were once possessed, and à fortiori the loss of all memory of them, is wholly unmentioned in the literary history of the Tipitaka. On the contrary, the texts contain here and there unconnected fragments of the history of Buddha's life, in a form which our Excursus II. will exemplify, and which cannot be construed as if the complete life of Buddha had at that time already found a connected literary exposition: Senart (p. 7, 8) has not overlooked the fact that in the sacred literature of the southern Buddhists there is no work like the "Lalita Vistara" in the north, in which there is a connected narrative of Buddha's life up to the beginning of his career as a teacher. But the explanation which the French scholar gives of this fact will scarcely gain acceptance with many. The legend of Buddha, with its popular character, he says, "a dû demeurer particulièrement vivace parmi les populations dont elle était réellement l'œuvre, et qui, dès le début, avaient activement collaboré à l'établissement et aux progrès de la secte nouvelle. À Ceylan au contraire, où le buddhisme, s'introduisit surtout par une propagande théologique et sacerdotale, des récits de ce genre n'avaient ni pour les prédicateurs ni pour leurs néophytes un intérêt si sensible ni si vivant." It will not be easy to prove this alleged difference between the dogmatic tendency of the Ceylonese, and the leanings of the northern Church to popular legend. In fact, the greater antiquity of the Pâli version of the sacred texts, compared with the northern editions, infected throughout by later literary currents, is the sole and completely satisfactory means of explaining the fact in question.