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CHAPTER IX
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
I. GENERAL VIEW
IN early times there must have been several T systems of literature preserved independently among the followers of different schools. No one of these schools preserved (that is, learnt by heart) the literature of the others. But each knew of the others, talked over the opinions maintained in them, considered in their own Suttas what was preserved in the Suttas of their opponents. We have a fair number of well-established instances of men who had received a long training in one school passing over to another. These men at least had thus acquired a familiarity, more or less complete, with two literatures.
In the forests adjoining the settlements, the dis. ciples of the various schools, living a hermit life, occupied themselves, according to the various tend. encies of the schools to which they belonged, either in meditation or in sacrificial rites, or in practices of self-torture, or in repeating over to themselves,
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Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
