- http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... guide.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;John T. Bullitt wrote:For example, knowing that it was the actions of just a few individuals that averted the extinction of the Tipitaka reminds us that it is ultimately up to individuals like ourselves to safeguard the teachings today. Without the post-canonical texts important lessons like these — if not the Tipitaka itself — might have been lost forever to the mists of time.
- http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... de.html#n2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;John T. Bullitt wrote: In the early decades of the 1st c. BCE in Sri Lanka — then the hub of Theravada Buddhist scholarship and monastic training — several forces combined that would threaten the continuity of the ancient oral tradition by which the Pali Tipitaka had been passed down from one generation of monks to the next. A rebellion against the king and invasions from south India forced many monks to flee the island. At the same time a famine of unprecedented proportions descended on the island for a dozen years. The commentaries recount heroic stories of monks who, fearing that the treasure of the Tipitaka might forever be lost, retreated to the relative safety of the south coast, where they survived only on roots and leaves, reciting the texts amongst themselves day and night. The continuity of the Tipitaka hung by a thread: at one point only one monk was able to recite the Niddesa. {PLL p. 76}
To think we really came that close to the Pali Tipitaka being lost, it's fascinating.
Mr. Bullitt cites Pali Literature and Language, ("PLL") by Wilhelm Geiger (New Delhi: Oriental Books, 1978) as his source for this information, and that would be my next point of call. As mentioned in the quoted text above the commentaries recount stories of this time, I wonder if anyone here has access to such stories?
Do we know anything further on the plight of Theravadan Buddhism in early 1st century BCE Sri Lanka?
Jack