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BUDDHIST INDIA
such changes. We should then be able to say what sort and degree of alteration the Ceylon scholars felt justified in making. But it is clear that they regarded the canon as closed.
While the books were in North India, on the other hand, and the canon was not considered closed, there
is evidence of a very different tone. One whole · book, the Kathā Vatthu, was added as late as the time
of Asoka; and perhaps the Parivāra, a inere string of examination questions, is not inuch older. One story in the Peta Vatthu' is about a king Pingalaka, said in the commentary to have reigned over Surat two hundred years after the Buddha's time; and another' refers to an event fifty-six years after the Buddha's death. The latter is certainly in its right place in this odd collection of legends. The former may (as the commentator thinks) have been added at Asoka's Council. Even if it were, that would be proof that they then thought no harm of adding to the legendary matter in their texts. And the whole of this little book of verses, together with the Vimnāna Vatthu (really only the other half of one and the same work), is certainly very late in tone as compared with the Nikāyas.
The same must be said of two other short collections of ballads. One is the Buddha Vamsa, containing a separate poem on each of twenty-five Buddhas, supposed to have followed one another in succession. The other is the Cariyā Pitaka, containing thirty-four short Jātaka stories turned into verse. Both of these must also be late. For in the Nikāvas TIV. 3.
91. 2.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
