Vinaya Texts

Author(s): T W Rhys Davids, Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford

Page 25

xxii
VINAYA TEXTS FROM THE PÂLI.
But the Ten Points in dispute were all matters of ecclesiastical law, they all related to observances of the brotherhood, they were in fact questions as to whether or not the ancient Rules should be relaxed or not in these ten respects. Is it possible that in a collection of works like the Vibhanga and the Khandhakas, which seek to set forth, down to the minutest detail, and even with hair-splitting diffuseness, all that has any relation to the daily life of the Brethren, and the regulations of the Buddhist Order-is it possible that in such a collection, if, when it was compiled, the struggle on the Ten Points had already burst into flame, there should be no reference at all, even in interpolations, to any one of these ten disputes ? That the difference of opinion on the Ten Points remains altogether unnoticed in those parts of the collection where, in the natural order of things, it would be obviously referred to, and that it is only mentioned in an appendix where the Council held on its account is described, shows clearly, in our opinion, that the Vibhanga and the Khandhakas (save the two last) are older than the Council of Vesâlî—and, of course, a fortiori that the Pâtimokkha and the Kammavâkâs are so too.
The Council of Vesâlî is said in the XIIth Khandhaka of the Kullavagga to have taken place a hundred years after the Buddha's death. This is no doubt a round number; and the exact year of the date of the Buddha's death is open to question. If it be placed, according to the Ceylon chronicles, at exactly 218 years before Asoka's coronation, it will fall in or about 483 B.C.
But the expression 218 years' can in no case be regarded as an absolutely reliable statement of actual fact, and the date of 483 B.C. must therefore be taken subject to a marginal allowance of some decades. And it appears to one of us, for various reasons which he has elsewhere stated at length, that the balance of probability leads to the conclusion that the date of the Buddha's Parinibbâna must be
Division actually contains two more Khandhakas than the larger. We lay no stress upon these facts, but it confirms the general argument to find little points of this kind tending in the same direction.
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