Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c8.34

c8.34

Both the sections of the sutta—that relating to heretical doctrines and that to the "Sāmaññaphalas"—recur in identical formulation at many other places in the canon, especially the second, which occurs in all the subsequent suttas except the last one of the first vagga of the DN. From this we cannot, indeed, conclude that the whole of that vagga forms a single stratum,¹⁷ although it certainly does emerge that suttas 3-12 of the DN in their present form presuppose the prior existence of the Sāmaññaphala°. It is, of course, not impossible that there once existed independently a text containing only the list of the "Sāmaññaphalas" to which the present sutta of that title and the other suttas mentioned above are equally indebted. But there is no direct evidence whatever to support this supposition.