The History of Buddhist Thought c10.14

c10.14

Before we can inquire what the doctrine was, and especially what was its most primitive form, it has to be realized that Buddhism had split up into sects before it possessed any written records. This does not in itself imply divergent teaching in the Scriptures. It is clear that for a long period the different schools appealed to the same Scripture. Yet the fact that it was all preserved by memory inevitably led to divergences in the Canon. Owing to the deliberate inclusion of utterances of the great disciples or of discourses attributed to them, as well as any passages which might contain an utterance of Buddha, there was ready opportunity for accretions.¹ But the Buddha-word includes also the rules of the community which was founded for the purpose of practising the new life. To begin by analysing the Doctrine without first examining the community and the circumstances in which it originated would be likely to lead to quite arbitrary results. The movement began not with a body of doctrine but with the formation of a society bound by certain rules. These rules of discipline have developed into the first division of the Scriptures, the Vinaya, and they have not only remained practically identical in most of the early schools, but the Vinaya as a whole has been preserved in such a way that the older and later parts can be easily seen. We can, therefore, start, if not at the very beginning at least with what is one of the earliest documents for the history of the Buddhist community.