The Problem Of ‘Original Buddhism'

A history of Buddhist thought might be expected to begin with an account of the teachings of the Buddha himself, or at least of the beliefs current in the most ancient community. The nature of our literary documents makes such an attempt fruitless and impossible. ¹⁸ The documents, as we have them, date back no farther than the Christian era, that is to say they were fixed five hundred years after the Buddha’s life on earth. ²⁰ Some of their contents must surely be quite early, while others are certainly fairly late. In order to single out the earlier layers, we must compare the recensions of the different schools, principally the Pali Canon of the Theravādins, the Sanskrit scriptures of the Sarvāstivādins and the few surviving texts of the Mahāsanghikas. Where we find passages in which the texts of Theravādins and Sarvāstivādins agree almost word by word, we can assume that they were composed at a time antedating the separation of the two schools, which took place during Aśoka’s rule, roughly about 250 BC. Where they do not agree, we may, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, infer their post-Aśokan date. In those cases where we can establish a close similarity also with the Mahāsanghika texts, we are carried back one more century, to c. 340 BC, within 140 years of the Buddha’s Nirvana, when the Mahāsanghikas separated from the Sthaviras who were the ancestors of both Theravādins ²¹ and Sarvāstivādins. This can be done with some of the Vinaya texts. ¹⁹ The material for a history of Buddhist thought must, however, come not from the Vinaya, but from the Sūtras, and their Mahāsanghika version is unfortunately lost. So the situation is rather unsatisfactory, and we should constantly remain aware of the limitations of our knowledge.