The History of Buddhist Thought c19.4

c19.4

This is most obvious in the case of the statements attached to each discourse saying where and on what occasion it was given.² Some of these may be genuine records, but the fact that in the case of every discourse the same kind of statement is given makes it probable that many of them rest on surmise. Besides such formal statements we often find complete legends. These are most frequent in the Vinaya, where each rule is furnished with an account of the event which led to its promulgation; but legends of the same kind occur in the suttas, their insertion there being justified by the Buddha-word which they contain. Passages like these make it probable that they were part of a complete legend, but a continuous life of Buddha, except in a very concise form, is not found until long after the close of the Pāli Canon. In several schools the separate legends of the Vinaya were collected to form an avadāna, a complete account of the “heroic deeds” of the Master. In the Mahāsanghika school it was the Mahāvastu. From Chinese sources we hear of several Sarvāstivāda schools which had such a biography, and the Lalita-vistara is probably a Mahāyāna elaboration of a Sarvāstivāda avadāna. All these works conclude with the Enlightenment and the immediately following events of “setting in motion the Wheel of the Doctrine”.