- BEGINNINGS: THE PALI SUTTAS
- Sámanera Bodhesako
The First
Council
"Come, friends: let us recite the
Teaching and the Discipline before what is not the Teaching shines forth and the Teaching
is put aside, before what is not the Discipline shines forth and the Discipline is put
aside, before those who speak what is not the Teaching become strong and those who speak
what is the Teaching become weak, before those who speak what is not the Discipline become
strong and those who speak what is the Discipline become weak."[23]
Thus, a few months after the
Buddha's decease a meeting now known as the First Council was held in the hills outside of
Rájagaha (modern Rajgir, in Bihar) in order to put the Vinaya and the Suttas into a
formal structure for the sake of those who would come later. Venerable Upáli, who had
gone forth at the same time as Venerable Ánanda, was designated responsible for the
Vinaya, as was Venerable Ánanda for the Suttas. The account of their stewardships
consists of but a few lines of reportage, probably edited long after the event -- most
likely together with the account of the Second Council, the report of which seems to be
much more contemporaneous with its subject matter.
The evidence is twofold. First, we
would expect the Cúlavagga to have, if not fewer, at least not more Khandhakas
than the Mahávagga. In the Suttas we often encounter Mahá/Cúla pairs, and the Mahá is
invariably the longer. At any rate the Tenth Khandhaka of the Cúlavagga is concerned with
the nuns. It would be inconsistent with attitudes displayed elsewhere in the texts for the
nuns' disciplinary matters to be placed ahead of the monks' concerns, particularly at such
an important convocation as the Council. Therefore, the account of the Councils must have
been appended at a time when the Vinaya was already considered closed to interpolations.
Indeed, the account of the Councils was almost certainly the final addition to the Vinaya
texts.
Second, it is said in Khandhaka XI
that Venerable Ánanda recited the five Nikáyas. Therefore the account could not
have been edited until a time when the five Nikáyas actually existed. Since the Suttas
never refer to themselves as consisting of Nikáyas at all, let alone as five, if we were
to assume the account to be contemporary, we would be forced to suppose that this
classification came into being quite dramatically. It is more reasonable to suppose that a
body of material existed which, though not formally included in the First Council
compilation, adhered to it as supplementary matter; that that material must have included
an account of the Council itself; and that it, as well as certain other materials,
eventually came to be included in the Canon before the Canon itself was regarded as
closed. The account was included at a time when the five Nikáyas already existed as
formally organized bodies of texts, but probably was codified quite soon after, for the
specification of the number five suggests an attempt to legitimize the last of
them, the Khuddaka Nikáya.
Be that as it may, it is not
difficult, despite the brevity of the reportage, to imagine what must have taken place.
The Council was no mere recitation of texts: that had been going on for forty-five years
and did not require a special assembly. The Council's aim must have been two-fold:
1) To decide what, out of the vast store of material at hand, should be
given the protection of formal organization; and
2) To set up a mechanism to preserve this material.
Obviously it couldn't all be
saved. Not only were there the Buddha's discourses, all 82,000 of them,[24] but also the discourses of many other monks, some of them learned,
wise, enlightened, liberated. Some of the discourses were duplicates -- the monks from
Sávatthí remembering the Buddha saying a particular Sutta when he was there; the monks
from Kusinagara remembering him saying quite the same thing on a visit to them -- others
varied in greater or lesser extent. Some variations were revealing, others perhaps less
so. These elders wanted this discourse included, those elders had other requests. In
addition to the formal discourses there were events of some significance: the famine in
Verańja and its effects on the Order, Devadatta's attempt at a schism, an attempt on
Venerable Sáriputta's life (Ud. IV,4 (39-41)), and so on. Which of these were worthy
of preservation? Which would be of less value to those who came later? How much was
enough, and how much too much? These decisions were, with regard to the Suttas, Venerable
Ánanda's responsibility as, with regard to the Vinaya, they were Venerable Upáli's.
The selection being made, it was then
necessary to assign to different teachers the responsibility of learning and passing on a
certain portion of a collection; for even among the august members of the Council -- there
were 500 elders, we are told, "not one more, not one less," and all were
liberated -- few would have been able to learn the Suttas in their entirety. If
one-hundred of them took responsibility for the Vinaya, there would have been one-hundred
each for the long discourses, the middle length discourses, the grouped collection, and
the enumerated collection.[25] Even though most monks could
take responsibility for passing on to their following no more than a portion of a
collection, yet every part of this organized recension would have been the responsibility
of a large number of schools. Thus, if one or several schools died out, their tradition
would not thereby be lost.
(A digression here on the question of
memory may be worthwhile. Literate people sometimes express doubt that large segments of
text could have been accurately remembered during the five centuries before they were
first written down. But anthropologists have often remarked on the extraordinary and
proven ability of their non-literate informants to remember accurately. It would seem that
the comparatively poor memory of literate folk is due to their very literacy: they don't need
to cultivate the faculty of memory. They forget (if they ever knew) that like all
faculties, if they don't use it they lose it. In literate cultures that part of experience
that is not readily recordable tends to become impoverished: literacy is not without it's
drawbacks.
(Although Venerable Ánanda was
pre-eminent in the ability to learn discourses apparently possessing what today is called
a "photographic memory", the ability to remember segments of texts which, in
print, take up a volume or more, was not an unusual ability. Even today, when we have
authoritative editions of all the texts printed in a variety of scripts, the ability is
not unheard of.
(In Burma government-regulated
examinations are offered monks annually to test their recall of the texts, as well as
their understanding of them. At present (1983) there are in Burma alone four monks who
have demonstrated their ability to recite by memory not only the Vinaya and Sutta
collections in their entirety, both of which are more voluminous today than in their
original First Council recension, but also the seven volumes of the Abhidhamma. Since 1949
when the examinations were first offered, 67 monks have passed the oral and written
examinations for the five volumes of the Vinaya and 265 have done so for the Suttas
comprising sixteen volumes. Additionally, well over 300 monks have passed oral and written
examinations proving their perfect recall and understanding of one entire Nikáya (Dígha:
122; Majjhima: 89; Samyutta: 52; Anguttara: 55). The number who can recite large portions
of a Nikáya -- a volume or more -- must be substantially higher. In Sri Lanka, where
recitation is also greatly valued but where, however, examinations are not offered, one
can find many more such reciters.[26])
When we remember that the cultivation
of mindfulness and awareness is a central discipline in the Buddha's Teaching, that the
Suttas were arranged in as mnemonic a manner as possible, that monks were encouraged to
review often the discourses in their minds and that they were expected to meet frequently
for group rehearsals, both within their own company and together with other companies, we
will not be surprised that at a time when memorization was the only way to transmit
the Teaching, such an ability, assiduously fostered, would be widespread and reliable. It
will be seen, then, that it was not (as is often asserted) due to the writing down of the
texts that they achieved their definitive form. Well before that time, when they had come
to be regarded as sacred, there already existed a method whereby they could be transmitted
from generation to generation without error.
Not everyone agreed with what was
being done. A wandering monk, the leader of a large company, Venerable Purána, while
travelling through the Southern Hills south of Rájagaha, came to the cave in the
canebrake where the Council was meeting. At this time the Vinaya and Suttas had already
been recited (i.e. organized, assigned and rehearsed).
"Friend Purána," the elders said to him,
"the Teaching and Discipline have been recited together by the elder monks. Please
submit yourself to this recitation."
"Friends," he replied, "the Teaching and
Discipline are well-recited by the elders. But in the way I have heard them in the Exalted
One's presence, in the way that I have received them in his presence, thus will I bear it
in mind." -- Cúlavagga XI,l,11 (ii,288-9)
Thereby Venerable Purána rejected not
only the organization of the Suttas into collections but, apparently, the structuring of
the Suttas individually into the form in which they had been cast for transmission. The
Council had no "legal" status by which it could compel other monks to submit to
it. decisions nor is the notion of compulsion consistent with the spirit of the Suttas and
the Vinaya: its strength lay in the collective repute, the upright conduct, and the wisdom
of its individual members. They could urge, and perhaps generally receive, compliance; but
they could not command it. Probably, then, Venerable Purána was not the only teacher who
chose to go his own way. Others too, though acknowledging that the Council's recension was
well-recited -- i.e. providing right-view guidance -- may have preferred to continue
teaching according to their own methods. We don't know for sure for none of those other
traditions have survived. The only record we have today of the Buddha's Teaching is that
dependent upon the collective repute, the upright conduct, and the wisdom of the
individuals who comprised the First Council.
Later Additions
"But how do we know," it may
be asked, "that with the closing of the First Council the Sutta recension that they
compiled remained intact, without additions? For if no additions were made later then,
true enough, we would have here the actual Teaching of the Buddha. But what grounds are
there for accepting this as so?"
A good and important question. The
answer being, that we don't know that "no additions were made later":
quite the contrary, we do know they were made.
The Canon had been open and growing
for nearly a half century. For it to be suddenly closed, and for there to be an immediate
acceptance of that closure sufficiently widespread for it to be effective, is contrary to
reason. Only when the compilation had come to be generally regarded as sacrosanct could
the Canon be successfully closed; and such an attitude necessarily develops gradually. And
the evidence of the Suttas themselves supports this view. There are, for example,
discourses in which Venerable Ánanda appears not as the Buddha's shadow but quite apart
from the Buddha. In these discourses he is regarded, except by Venerable Mahá Kassapa, as
a respected elder; he is called mahá-ácariya, "great teacher" in
A. X,96 (v,198) and in S. XVI,11 (ii,218) he is said to have been touring the
Southern Hills leading a great company of monks. It is clear that at least some of these
discourses took place after his attendancy on the Buddha had ended, with the decease of
his master. Indeed, two of them -- Subha Sutta, D. 10, and Gopaka-Moggallána Sutta,
M. 108 -- state specifically in their introductory material (D. i,204 and
M. iii,7) that they took place "not long after" the Buddha's decease. And
there are discourses involving monks other than Venerable Ánanda in which the text itself
informs us that the conversation took place after the Buddha's passing away.[27] Nor can we reasonably suppose all these talks to have occurred during
the few months between the Buddha's decease and the convening of the First Council. Some
of them may have, but Madhurá (of M. 84), for instance, was in Western India, not so
far from present-day Delhi but a great distance From Rájagaha, over very bad roads
(A. V,220 (iii,256)): even if the discourse itself had originated before the Council
met, it could hardly have become known in Rájagaha in such a short time, let alone become
popular enough for inclusion in the recension. But even if such is
maintained, there still remains the Bakkula Sutta, M. 124 (iii,124-28), in which
Venerable Bakkula asserts, at least thirty-three times, that he has been a monk for eighty
years.
Now, all accounts agree that the
Buddha's decease took place forty-five years after his awakening. Therefore even if
Venerable Bakkula had been ordained very soon after the establishment of the Order,[28] the discourse still had to have taken place at least
thirty-five years after the closing of the First Council. And in all likelihood it took
place even later than that although Venerable Bakkula could not have been spoken of by the
Buddha unless his ordination took place during the Buddha's lifetime: i.e. the Bakkula
Sutta postdates the First Council, but by less than eighty years. We can be quite certain,
then, that the First Council did not produce the version of the texts that we now have.
But we can be equally certain that the compilation they produced is in no way dramatically
different from what we now have. Consider:
If we examine the seven Suttas just
referred to, we will notice that they have in common a distinctive feature. Whereas the
usual way the discourses begin is: "One time the Exalted One was dwelling
at..."[29] these discourses make no mention of
where the Buddha dwelt. Rather, they begin: "One time Venerable Ánanda (or Venerable
Udena, or whoever) was dwelling at..." In other words, by this method they inform us
at the very start that they are in fact later additions and are not to be taken as having
been part of the First Council's compilation.[30] There is no
attempt to disguise the fact. On the contrary, there is a conscientiousness in its
assertion.
And when we look through the Nikáyas
we find other discourses which follow this same form: "One time Ven. So-and-so was
dwelling at..." Although they do not always otherwise declare themselves to be later
additions -- for once should be enough -- yet often we can find further telltale evidence
that this is so. Thus for example in the Dígha Nikáya aside from the already-mentioned
Subha Sutta, there is only one other discourse out of the thirty-four in that collection
wherein we are told the dwelling not of the Buddha but of the main individual, Venerable
Kumára Kassapa, in this case. This discourse -- the Páyási Sutta, D. 23
(ii,316-58) -- involves a long discussion between Venerable Kassapa and the chieftain
Páyási, mainly on the subject of rebirth. The chieftain presents a series of thought-out
reasonings as evidence that there is no rebirth. Venerable Kassapa presents
counter-arguments, primarily in the form of elaborate similes,[31]
showing the flaws in Páyási's theses. In the end although Venerable Kassapa does not
actually offer any arguments in favour of rebirth, Páyási declares himself to be
both convinced and pleased.
Now, on numerous occasions the Buddha
declared that for beings constrained by craving there is rebirth (S. XXII,25 (iii,26)
etc). He said that he could remember his own past lives (M. 4 (i,22) etc), that he
could see the passing on of beings according to their deeds (M. 4 (i,22-3) etc), and
that by means of certain mental practices others could develop these abilities
(A. X,102 (v,211) etc), and had done so: e.g. the Venerable Mahá Moggallána and
Anuruddha. But nowhere do the Suttas record the Buddha arguing in favour of rebirth on logical
grounds; nor would we expect him to do so for rebirth is not a matter of logic. Yet
despite Venerable Kassapa's assertion that until then he had neither seen nor heard of
anyone sharing Páyási's views, there must have been many sceptics to judge both from the
views ascribed by the texts to the various teachers of the day and from the frequency with
which the Suttas assert rebirth; and most monks -- even among those who had personally
achieved complete self-purification -- would have had to accept rebirth on the basis of
confidence in the Buddha rather than from direct knowledge (see S. XII,70 (ii,122-3),
and compare A. VII,54 (iv,78-82)). After the Buddha's decease, then, there was a
strongly felt need for some sort of textual authority to lend support to these monks on
the question of rebirth, just as the Madhurá Sutta, mentioned earlier, seems to have been
included to lend support to the Buddhist teaching of ethical equality between castes. It
matters not at all that Venerable Kassapa's similes are unlikely to convince a modern
sceptic: they were appropriate to their time; they filled an existing need. And that need
would have been felt most strongly among the reciters and preservers of the long
discourses.
The Páyási Sutta, which is obviously
the model for the much later Milindapańha, could have been made much shorter -- and hence
included in any of the other Nikáyas -- by eliminating extraneous introductory and
concluding material and some of the more elaborate similes; so it was not only due to
considerations of length that it came to be included in the Dígha Nikáya.[32] Rather, questions about rebirth are more apt to be raised by the laity
whose goal is to obtain a good rebirth than by monks whose aim is to transcend rebirth
entirely, and in fact the arguments of the Páyási Sutta, concerned as they are with
reasoning and simile, are more likely to convince a layperson than a practising monk who
-- questions of relevance aside -- might be better convinced by evidence concerned with
direct reflection and perception. Of the four Nikáyas the Dígha is, for reasons we have
already noted, the one most directed to the interests of laypeople, thus lending
substantiation to the Commentarial suggestion that Venerable Ánanda was primarily
responsible for this collection. Hence the monks who would most likely seek textual
support on the question of rebirth would be the dígha-bhánakas, the
"reciters of the Dígha". There would have developed among the individuals of
the various companies who shared the responsibility for various portions of the long
discourses a consensus that the Páyási Sutta, until then a part of the peripheral
material known by those reciters but not included in their texts, should be formally
included in the Nikáya. Since the Dígha is divided into three Vaggas, or sections, each
about a volume in length, and since the Páyási Sutta, is now the last discourse of the
second Vagga, the responsibility apparently was assigned to or taken up by those who
recited the middle portion of the long discourses. However, it was not always the case
that later Suttas came to be placed at the end of a Vagga, as the evidence shows.
The discourse makes no claim to being
the ipsissima verba of the Buddha. It presents itself as being, in its central
portion, a conversation between a certain fairly obscure monk and a certain layman,
apparently mentioned nowhere else in the Suttas; there is no reason not to accept it on
those terms. It acknowledges itself to be a later addition as the Commentator Dhammapála
points out at Vimána Vatthu Commentary, p. 297: indeed, every discourse identified
by the traditional commentaries as post-First Council begins, it seems, with the "One
time Venerable So-and-so" formula. But it was not a haphazard addition: the
mechanism by which the Suttas were passed on necessitated, before the Canon was closed,
that additional material could be inserted only when there was a common accord among those
who were responsible for a portion of the texts.
Turning now to the Majjhima Nikáya
we learn more about the process of adding discourses. Other than those already mentioned
there are two discourses in the Majjhima that make no mention of the Buddha's dwelling
place: the Anumána Sutta, M. 15 (i,95-100) and the Máratajjaníya Sutta, M. 50
(i,332-8). Both begin: "One time Venerable Mahá Moggallána dwelt in the Bhagga
Country..." Since we know from S. XLVII,14 (v,163-5) that both Sáriputta and
Mahá Moggallána predeceased the Buddha, the discourses themselves could not have taken
place after the time of the First Council as was evidently the case with the Páyási
Sutta; rather they were simply not included in that compilation.[33]
But we note that the two Majjhima Suttas have the same venue, and that the Bhagga Country
was an out-of-the-way place, at least as measured by the infrequency of its mention in the
Suttas.[34] Since Venerable Mahá Moggallána and Venerable
Sáriputta were the two chief disciples of the Buddha, the monks living among the Bhaggas
would certainly have remembered the former's visit to them and would have kept in mind
what he had said and done, as part of their local tradition.
There must have been in residence
there some companies of majjhima-bhánakas, preserving at least the first third of
the Majjhima Nikáya, which today contains 152 Suttas and, like the Dígha, is divided
into three volume-length Vaggas. They would be the ones to have wished to include these
two discourses -- all the more precious for having taken place there -- in their
collection, to raise them from the lower status of local tradition and to afford them
additional protection against being lost. When meeting with neighbouring majjhima-bhánakas,
as they must have done from time to time, not only to recite together, they successfully
convinced their fellow-monks to include these two discourses in their own recitations.
Thus, due in effect to local boosterism, the Canon grew. And when we look at the Samyutta
Nikáya we find further evidence of this.
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Footnotes:
23. Venerable Mahá Kassapa, the
elected head of the First Council. Cúlavagga Xl,1,1 (ii,284) [Back to text]
24. We noted earlier (footnote 15) that Venerable Ánanda knew 84,000 discourses. The four
Nikáyas as we now have them comprise sixteen volumes; 5,500 pages in their abbreviated
roman-script edition contain according to the Commentarial reckoning a total of 17,505
discourses although some are quite short. Though the precise number of discourses is
problematical, we can see that in any case what was included, voluminous as it is, is but
a fraction of what was available. [Back to text]
25. These figures -- other than
the "500" -- are entirely speculative. Their purpose is only to demonstrate
that, whatever the specific details, a mechanism for preserving the texts was entirely
feasible. However, the Commentarial assertion -- Sumangalavilásiní I,13 -- that primary
responsibility for these four collections was assigned respectively to Venerable Ánanda,
the pupils of Venerable Sáriputta, Venerable Mahá Kassapa and Venerable Anuruddha, lends
support to our suggestion. [Back to text]
26. Data courtesy Religious
Affairs Department, Rangoon. [Back to text]
27. E.g. the Madhurá Sutta,
M. 84 (ii,83-90), with Venerable Mahá Kaccána and King Avantiputta of Madhurá; the
Ghotamukha Sutta, M. 94 (ii,157-63), with Venerable Udena and the bráhmana
Ghotamukha. [Back to text]
28. This, however, is unlikely.
Venerable Bakkula seems to be mentioned, in the whole of the four Nikáyas, in only one
other context: in A. I,14 (i,25) he is declared by the Buddha to be foremost among
all monks in respect of good health. [Back to text]
29. Because the Samyutta and
Anguttara Nikáyas contain numerous short discourses, therein this formula is often
abbreviated or omitted entirely. This almost certainly was done by the later scribes
rather than the earlier reciters. In these instances we know that the Buddha is the
speaker by his use of the term bhikkhave, the vocative form for "monks";
for in those days all monks addressed one another as ávuso
(= "reverend" or "sir"); only the Buddha used the term bhikkhave.
[Back to text]
30. This is in distinction to
those Suttas, presumably not later additions, in which although the Buddha plays no
part whatsoever in the narrative, yet his dwelling place at that time is nevertheless
given according to the usual formula. Examples will be found at D. 34; M. 5, 9,
28, 69, 76, 127; S. V,1, VI,3, 6, 9; A. VI,34, etc. A comparison of
S. LV,52 (v,405-6) and S. LVI,30 (v,436-7) points up the distinction. In neither
case does the Buddha appear "on stage"; in both cases he is quoted; the first
discourse begins "One time the Buddha was dwelling at..."; the second begins
"One time a number of senior monks were dwelling at..." [Back to
text]
31. Like Venerable Bakkula,
Venerable Kumára Kassapa is mentioned elsewhere in the four Nikáyas only at A. I,14
(i,24), where he is declared foremost in respect of embellished speech. Had the Páyási
Sutta not been appended to the Canon, we would have had no example of this. He is also
mentioned once in the Vinaya. In affirming the validity of his admission to the Order, for
which one must be at least twenty years of age, the Buddha stated that age is reckonable
not from birth but from conception, declaring that it is in the womb that "the mind (citta)
first arises, consciousness (vińńána) first becomes manifest." --
Mahávagga I,75 (i,92) [Back to text]
32. Nor is length an absolute
criterion. There are at least fifteen Suttas in the other three Nikáyas that are longer
than the shortest of the Dígha Suttas. [Back to text]
33. There are a number of other
discourses which also begin "One time Ven. So-and-so..." but which similarly
must have been delivered during the Buddha's lifetime. For example there are about 75 such
Suttas involving either Ven. Mahá Moggallána or Ven. Sáriputta or both. There are also
two Suttas (S. XLI,9 (iv,300-302) and A. II,36 (i,65-7)) wherein it is
specifically stated in the dialogue that the Buddha was then living at Sávatthí, in the
latter instance, but in the former the location is not given. Therefore we cannot assert
that all "One time Ven. So-and-so..." discourses were delivered after the
Buddha's decease: only that they came to be included in the Canon at a later date. [Back to text]
34. A number of other "One
time Ven. So-and-so..." discourses are also set in remote locales: Álaví, Avantí,
Cetí, Madhurá, etc., generally West of the centres where the texts locate, Venerable
Ánanda: Vesálí, Pátaliputta, Rájagaha, Kosambí. Although during the Buddha's day the
West of India was still "pioneer country" as regards the Teaching, we know (as
discussed in the Appendix) that within a century of the
First Council these western territories had risen to monastic prominence and, perhaps,
cultural importance as well: Taxila was already a centre of learning even in the Buddha's
day: Mahávagga VIII,1,6-7 (i,269-70). [Back to text]
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