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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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principal Sanskrit authorities which we still possess were composed by the beginning of the Christian era at least; how much earlier is less easily determined.
According to the Buddhists themselves, the doctrines of Sákya Muni were not committed to writing by him, but were orally communicated to his disciples, and transmitted in like manner by them to succeeding generations. When they were first written is not clearly made out from the traditions of the north; but they agree with those of the south in describing the occurrence of different public councils or convocations at which the senior Buddhist priests corrected the errors that had crept into the teaching of heterodox disciples and agreed upon the chief points of discipline and doctrine that were to be promulgated. The first of these councils was held, it is said, immediately after Sakya Muni's death; the second 110, and the third 218 years afterwards, or about 246 s.c. The northern Buddhists confound apparently the second and third councils, or take no notice of the latter in the time of Asoka, but place the third in Kashmir under the patronage of Kanishka or Kanerka, one of the Hindo - Scythic kings, 400 years after Buddha's Nirváňa, or B.c. 153. Both accounts agree that the propagation of Buddhism, by missions dispatched for that purpose, took place after the third council.
According to the traditions which are current in the south as well as the north, the classification of the Buddhist authorities as the Tripitaka (the three collections) took place at the first council; tlie portion
