Pāli Piṭakas, are at least older than the Council of Vesāli.[1]
The Council of Vesāli was held about a hundred years after Gotama's death, to settle certain disputes as to points of discipline and practice which had arisen among the members of the Order. The exact date of Gotama's death is uncertain;[2] and in the tradition regarding the length of the interval between that event and the Council, the 'hundred years' is of course a round number. But we can allow for all possibilities, and still keep within the bounds of certainty, if we fix the date of the Council of Vesāli at within thirty years of 350 B.C.
The members of the Buddhist Order of Mendicants were divided at that Council — as important for the history of Buddhism as the Council of Nice is for the history of Christianity — into two parties. One side advocated the relaxation of the rules of the Order in ten particular matters, the others adopted the stricter view. In the accounts of the matter, which we at present only possess from the successors of the stricter party (or,
- ↑ This will hold good though the Buddhavaŋsa and the Cariyā Piṭaka should turn out to be later than most of the other books contained in the Three Pāli Piṭakas. That the stories they contain have already become Jātakas, whereas in most of the other cases above quoted the stories are still only parables, would seem to lead to this conclusion; and the fact that they have preserved some very ancient forms (such as locatives in i) may merely be due to the fact that they are older, not in matter and ideas, but only in form. Compare what is said below as to the verses in the Birth Stories.
- ↑ The question is discussed at length in my 'Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon' in 'Numismata Orientalia,' vol. i.
