The History of Buddhist Thought c11.s3.20

c11.s3.20

There is an excellent translation of the *Kathāvatthu* with extracts from the commentary by Mr. Shwe Zan Aung and Mrs. Rhys Davids. But the unfortunate result of this useful piece of work has been an astonishing amount of mistaken assumptions and slipshod inferences by scholars who have never taken the trouble to look at the text or to distinguish between the text and commentary. It was asserted that Tissa " composed " the work, though the Pāli authorities do not say so, and, as Mrs. Rhys Davids has pointed out, it could not have been composed by one man. It was also assumed that it mentions the sects that held the heretical doctrines which it refutes. If this were so, we should have fairly early evidence for the teachings of these schools. But, in fact, no names of schools are given in it.