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INTRODUCTION.
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tells us in the account of Mahinda's missionary journey to Ceylon (241/318), that the son of Asoka had to spend three years in learning the Tipitaka by heart from the mouth of a teacher1? No mention is then made of any books or MSS., when it would have been most natural to do so 2. At a later time, during the reign of King Vattagamani? (88-76 B.C.), the same chronicle, the Mahâvamsa, tells us that 'the profoundly wise priests had theretofore orally (mukhapâthena) perpetuated the Pali of the Pitakattaya and its Atthakathâ (commentary), but that at this period the priests, foreseeing the perdition of the people assembled, and in order that the religion might endure for ages, recorded the same in books (potthakesu likhâpayum)
No one has yet questioned the dates of the Dîpavamsa, about 400 A.D., or of the first part of the Mahavamsa, between 459-477 A. D., and though no doubt there is an interval of nearly 600 years between the composition of the Mahâvamsa and the recorded writing down of the Buddhist canon under Vattagâmani, yet we must remember that the Ceylonese chronicles were confessedly founded on an older Atthakatha preserved in the monasteries of the island, and representing an unbroken line of local tradition.
My own argument therefore, so long as the question was only whether we could assign a pre-Christian date to the Pâli Buddhist canon, has always been this. We have the commentaries on the Pali canon translated from Sinhalese into Pali, or actually composed, it may be, by Buddhaghosa. Buddhaghosa confessedly consulted various
· Mahâvamsa, p.37; Dipavamsa VII, 28-31; Buddhaghosha's Parables, p.xviii. ? Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, p. 351.
: Dr. E. Müller (Indian Antiquary, Nov. 1880, p. 270) has discovered inscriptions in Ceylon, belonging to Devanapiya Maharåga Gâmini Tissa, whom he identifies with Vattagamani.
• The same account is given in the Dipavamsa XX, 20, and in the Sarasangraha, as quoted by Spence Hardy, Legends, p. 192. As throwing light on the completeness of the Buddhist canon at the time of King Vattagamani, it should be mentioned that, according to the commentary on the Mahavamsa (Turnour, p. liii), the sect of the Dhammarukikas established itself at the Abhayavihara, which had been constructed by Vattagamani, and that one of the grounds of their secession was their refusing to acknowledge the Parivara (thus I read instead of Pariwána) as part of the Vinaya-pitaka. According to the Dipavamsa (VII, 42) Mahinda knew the Parivara.
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