retrofuturist wrote:Does anyone know anything about Steven Collins, and/or the supporting evidence for his assertion?
Not intended to be an ad hominem, but it does pay to bear in mind that Collins is influenced by Gregory Schopen's skepticism about the "datability" and provenance of the texts that are generally accepted by "Early Buddhism" scholars.
One of the main objections of Schopen to the claimed antiquity of the Pali Canon is that no certainty can be given to this claimed provenance beyond an acknowledgement that the only evidence of the Canon's "closure" comes from the time when the Commentaries were reduced to writing, ie Ven Buddhagosa's era. I think the "Early Buddhism" scholars would point out that Schopen's lack of expertise in the Chinese Agama parallels is not justification for his disbelief in the Pali Canon and Agamas closing earlier than Ven Buddhagosa, or in the utility of Textual Criticism.
I think one of the rejoinder to that was that sometime before Ven Buddhagosa, the different sects of Indian Buddhism "levelised" the texts to a more-or-less similar core. That really stands way out there, on par with some Tibetan apologists (in S'pore) who argue that Theravada must be Hinayana because a psychic council was held between the Lankan monks, the North-East Indian monks and the North-West Indian monks to standardise all the early texts...
Schopen's influence on contemporary Buddhist studies is so pervasive that you can detect Gombrich's exasperation with Schopen's insistence on epigraphy as the sole evidence that is reliable.
To get a flavour of some of Schopen's influence, check out this entry on Ajahn Sujato's blog -
http://sujato.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/ ... y-schopen/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
There's a more fulsome dissection of Schopen's methods by Alexander Wynne here -
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29421072/Wynn ... uttapitaka" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;