Bankei wrote:Bill
Just because I am not convinced by your arguments does not mean I am ignoring them. You seem to have a thing about 'attacking' me too!
That naughty Bill, shame on him.
Have you heard of the theory of impermanence? Why do you think a scripture would remain word for word for over 2400 years?
I never said that, did I? The texts, however, seem to be far better preserved than you seem to be giving them credit.
In China classical texts were memorised and written down and passed on. This would have included the DDJ.
Memorized and recited by groups of monks on a routine basis?
Why assume the language of Buddhism in the first century of Sri lanka was in Pali? Richard Salomon has mentioned there are, surprisingly, very few Pali inscriptions found in Sr Lanka from the early period.
And what would be the point of inscriptions in Pali when it is a liturgical language that the common folk do not know? K.R. Norman puts Pali within a couple generation of the Buddha. It certainly would have been a dialect easily understood by the Buddha, being not so different from Magadhi.
I don't think Irish was used in ancient Sri Lanka
It was a joke, son, a joke.
but there are a few reasons to think that the scriptures may not have been in Pali, including:
- Scarcity of Pali inscriptions from this era (see Salomon)
Not convincing, see above.
- evidence that at least some of the sutta were in a language other than Pali (see norman)
Norman certainly does not hold your doubts.
- Buddhagosha had to translate the commentaries into Pali
Because the commentaries were in Shinalese.
They [assuming you mean the commentaries] may have . . . closely related Prakrit.
Not according to the records.
You ask how I would know what the exact words of the Buddha were.
Well, I don't. But:
- it is likely that the Buddha did not speak Pali.
So? He likely spoke in a dialect hardly removed from Pali.
- It is also likely that, at least part of, the Pali texts were 'translated' into Pali from another dialect.
That is what Norman said, which is reasonable, but hardly indicates wholesale editing.
- The monk Purana, from the time of the Buddha, did not agree with the teachings as per the first council.
And that was very neatly addressed on Buddha-L. Let the rest of the reads know what was said there about that.
http://www.preterhuman.net/texts/religi ... tbudcn.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
- There are discrepancies between the Suttas/agamas as preserved in Gandhari, sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese etc. (would your counterargument would be that these others were all modified and not the Pali?).
And are we talking about finding Buddha-nature doctrines in this other texts? Or are we talking about no real significant doctrinal difference?
In 1977 Charles Prebish and Jan Nattier showed that the Theravada vinaya was probably added to, and the Mahasamghika vinaya is likely to be older. Prebish has just written a new article in Pacific World standing by his 1977 discovery too.
This is what I mean by editing.
What part of the Vinaya? Also, there are significant differences of opinion on that matter. Nakamura, in his INDIAN BUDDHISM, points out that Vinaya study is big among Japanese scholars and that they hold the the Pali Vinaya is the oldest overall.
I am not sure there was any large scale conscious editing, except maybe at the various councils where texts were standardised.
I have not seen any modern scholar hold that there was any large scale editing. Standardization is not uncommon, but I'd like to see where it has made any major change in doctrinal teachings.