Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c22.4

c22.4

But the Digambaras go further: even in the Council of Pāṭaliputra they had refused to acknowledge the authenticity of the then compiled eleven Aṅgas. And the Śvetāmbaras tell us that even within this compilation disorder crept in and it had to be centrally re-edited in the Council at Valabhī; and our present Aṅgas represent the text as fixed in this second council which took place a little less than a thousand years after the death of Mahāvīra. All these texts should, therefore, be considered late, except such as can on internal grounds prove their earliness in whole or in part.³ That in spite of having sprawled over a millennium of literary activity the Jaina canon should still preserve many genuinely early fragments is in itself a marvellous tribute to the conservatism of the Jainas, which, however, must not be strained too far, as Jacobi, for instance, does when he observes that "Der Grund für die Conservirung der alten Lehre scheint mir der zu sein, dass ihre Ideen und Termini mit denen der späteren Philosophie incommensurabel waren, also von letzterer nicht beeinflußt werden konnten. Sie waren gewisser-massen versteinert und wurden in den Zustand von Generation zu Generation unverändert überliefert."⁴ The danger in holding such a view too rigidly is that we might consider as early many doctrines which really represent later developments.