Vinaya Texts

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

Page 38

INTRODUCTION.
XXXV
possibility of using writing as a means of guarding against such painful accidents. Can this have arisen from any belief that writing the books would have been an irreverent treatment of them? We cannot think that among such a community as that of the Buddhists — who were so advanced in their views that they deliberately adopted the language of the people, and even took no thought, within the ranks of their community, of caste- any such consideration would have prevailed. It seems much more probable that, at the date referred to, the art of writing had not been taken advantage of for the purposes of any kind of literature; but that its use was wholly confined to recording short messages or notes, or private letters, or advertisements of a public character - a result which may well have been due to the want of any practical material on which to engrave the letters that were nevertheless evidently known.
On the texts above quoted, and the inferences which may fairly be drawn from them, we would base two remarks. Firstly, that there can be no reasonable ground for doubting the correctness of the ancient tradition preserved in the well-known verse of the Ceylon Chroniclers, when, speaking of the time of Vatta Gâmani, who began to reign 88 B. C., they say, •The text of the Three Pitakas, and the Commentary too
thereon, The wise Bhikkhus of former time had handed down by
word of mouth : The then Bhikkhus, perceiving how all beings do decay, Meeting together, wrote them in books, that the Dhamma
might last long?? But, secondly, though we must therefore believe that the
1 Compare Burnell, Elements of South Indian Palaeography,' p. 10.
Dîpavamsa XX, 20, 21; Mahavamsa, p. 207. As the stanza is common to both works it is taken in all probability, word for word, from the Old Commentary in Simhalese, the Sih alatthakathâ, preserved in the Mahâvihara in Anuradhapura. See H. Oldenberg's Introduction to his edition of the Dipavamsa.
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