The History of Buddhist Thought c12.2

c12.2

WE have reason to believe that the rules of discipline go back to a very early period, and that the fundamental rules must go back to the beginnings of the Order.¹ All these rules were meant to make it possible for the individual to follow a way of life in which he could acquire the knowledge which the Master had realized for himself. The disciples held that this knowledge and the way to attain it had also been taught by the Master, and that in his utterances they possessed his teaching, the Dhamma as well as the Vinaya, which they preserved by memory. There can be no doubt that they did preserve such utterances, but they also possessed much more—discourses and commentaries of disciples, poems, legends, and stories, in which the Buddha-word might consist of not more than a single verse or sentence. It is not so easy, as in the case of the Vinaya, to distinguish what is truly original, but we possess lists and classifications which tell us what the earliest Buddhists held to be fundamental.