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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
331
We may consider it then established upon the most probable evidence, that the chief Sanskrit authorities of the Buddhists still in our possession were written, at the latest, from a century and a half before, to as much after, the era of Christianity.
Now what is the case with the Páli authorities of the South? We have it most explicitly stated in the great Singhalese authority, the Mahawanso *, that the doctrines of Buddha were handed down orally, for more than four centuries after his death; and that they were not reduced to writing till the reign of Wattagamini, between B.c. 104 and 76. And that then the Pitakam was first written in Páli, and the commentary upon it (the Atthakatha) in Singhalese. The latter did not exist in Pali until the fifth century of the Christian era, or between A.D. 410, 432, when Buddhaghosa, originally a Brahman of Magadha, arrived in Ceylon, and gave the first impulse to the cultivation of his own dialect, the Magadhí, to which the people of the south have applied the term Páli; meaning, according to M. Turnour, “perfect, regular”.
* [c. XXXIII, 106 ff. with which the following verses of the Dipawansa, c. 20, almost literally agree:
Wattagáinani abhayo panchamásesu ádito Evam dvádasa vassáni rájá rajjam akárayi 11 Pitakattayapálincha tassá aithakathani cha Mukhapathena ánesum pubbe bhikkhú mahámatá 11 Hánim disvána sattánañ tadá bhikkhú samagata
Thiratthitattliam Jhammassa potthakesu likhápayuni 11 See also N. L. Westergaard, Om de ældste Tidsrum i den indiske Historie. Kjóbenhavn: 1860, p. 39.]
