The History of Buddhist Thought c20.18

c20.18

The arrangement of the four Nikāyas or Āgamas must also have originated before sectarian differences became acute. The same principle of division is found in all schools : one collection of long suttas, one collection of medium long, one of groups of connected subjects, and a numerical group. As there is no doubt that this grouping was earlier than the committing of the discourses to writing, it is easy to see how the same material might be grouped differently by different schools, though the collection of long suttas is nearly the same in all. Before the adoption of this arrangement there must have been much opportunity for the introduction of unauthorized material, but there was an evident desire to keep the text pure, and the elaborate subdivisions of the Nikāyas were a help in preventing the introduction of arbitrary additions. Not only was the matter in each group determined to some extent by its special character, but each group was subdivided into smaller groups and again into series (vaggas) of about ten each. At the end of each series the titles of each sutta were recorded in a memorial verse. There was the less temptation to introduce spurious passages owing to the fact that no attempt was made to include within the four Nikāyas everything that might claim to be the Buddha-word. When the four Nikāyas were organized, it would be natural that there should be some works which could not be included in the scheme, or which were suspect. A number of such unclassified passages are, in fact, found in most schools. In the Pāli and some other schools they have been formed into a fifth Nikāya, but even in the Pāli, which has carried systematization furthest, there has been no general agreement as to what should be admitted. In this group we have the Buddhist Apocrypha. Its very existence was likely to preserve the older collections from accretions, as it remained a repository for doubtful works. This does not take us back to a primitive tradition, but only to a stage when the recorded Buddha-word was classified and edited.