Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 196

LITERATURE
175
ductions to, or in illustration of, some ethical point. It would have been so easy to bring in a passing reference to some Ceylon worthy—in the same way as the brahmin Buddhaghosa does so often, in his Attha Sālinī, which was revised in Ceylon.' If the Pitaka books had been tampered with, would not opportunity have been taken to yield to this very natural impulse ?
We know a great deal now of developed or corrupted doctrine current in Ceylon, of new technical terms invented, of new meanings put into the older phrases. Not one single instance has yet been found of any such later idea, any such later forin of language, any such later technical term, in any one of the canonical books.
The philosophic ideas of the ancient Buddhism, and the psychological ideas on which they were based, were often curtly, naïvely, confusedly expressed. In Ceylon they had been much worked up, polished, elucidated, systematised. From several works now accessible we know fairly well the tone and manner of these later-and, as they must have seemed to Ceylon scholars, clearer, fuller — statements of the old ideas. In no single instance yet discovered has this later tone and manner found its way into the canonical books.
It would seem, then, that any change that may have been made in these North Indian books after they had been brought into Ceylon must have been insignificant. It would be a great advantage if we should be able to find even one or two instances of
See Mrs. Rhys Davids's Buddhist Psychology', p. xxi.