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LITERATURE
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Each differs from the next (in point of date) by small gradations in doctrine. There are such differences even within the Nikayas themselves. Many Sanskrit books, though they differ, by containing certain details of later opinion, from the oldest Pali ones, still, on the whole, have to be classed with the Pali rather than with the other Sanskrit works. The Sanskrit Mahā Vastu, for instance ("The Sublime Story") is much nearer to the Pali Cariya Pitaka("The Tradition as to Conduct ") than it is to such Sanskrit books as the "Lotus of the Good Law." All three alike had their origin in the Middle Country-where exactly, in that country, we cannot, with respect to any one of the three, determine. The only two ancient works we can specify as distinctly northern in origin, the Milinda and the Gosinga Anthology, are neither of them written in Sanskrit, and are identical in doctrine with what is called southern Buddhism. Is it not rather absurd to have to ticket as southern just the very two books we know to be the most northern in origin?
There is not now, and never has been, any unity either of opinion or of language in what is called northern, or in what is called southern Buddhism. There is a distinct disadvantage in continually suggesting a unity which has no existence in fact. In a word, the current division of Buddhist literature into northern and southern is entirely unscientific, and misleading. It contains a suggestio falsi in at least two important respects. It cuts across the only division that has a scientific basis, the division, not according to the locality whence we get our Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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