The History of Buddhist Thought c28.s3.2

c28.s3.2

and one in which original composition continually went on, that there should be spurious and apocryphal works claiming a place in the Canon. It would not be easy to insert an additional sutta in the four Nikāyas after they had been classified and numbered, but there was always a number of unclassified works, and even when the Theravādins placed them in an additional Nikāya no agreement was ever reached as to what it contained. The literary activity of the Sarvāstivādins was even greater, for they continued to exist in India with a great system of education and centres of literary activity. The three forms of composition, nidāna, avadāna, and upadeśa became definite types of literature.¹ Of these, avadāna is the most important. Whatever the derivation of the word may be, there is no doubt that it means "heroic feat, glorious achievement", but this describes only the contents, and does not tell how as a class of composition Avadāna is to be distinguished from the rest. Yet the actual Avadānas have a very distinct character. They are either single works or a number of these works made into a collection. One of the best known is the Divyāvadāna, the divine Avadāna, and consists of thirty-eight tales. A number of them are evidently tales which illustrate the occasion leading to the formulation of a Vinaya rule, and S. Lévi has proved that most of the work is compiled from the tales in the Vinaya of the Mūla-Sarvāstivādins. Three other important Avadānas were evidently compiled in the same way, the Avadāna-śataka, the Karma-śataka, and the Damamūka.² It was easy for such works to be admitted as Scripture, for the tales of which they were composed mostly originated in canonical works, and any composition which contained sayings of Buddha might be reckoned as the Buddha-word.