http://www.tricycle.com/feature/whose-buddhism-truest
Check this out... not sure if some of you have read before..
Sometime probably around 1994, looters unearthed 29 birch bark scrolls somewhere in eastern Afghanistan or northwest Pakistan, an area once known as Gandhara—a Buddhist cultural hotspot during the early Christian era
The curators studied the birch barks and initial findings could date back as long as 2000 years or more... mahayana texts..!
Click to pg 2 and you see the model has changed - a tree-like model to bush-like model: how Buddhism spread... and schools developed
The article is a long one with many personal opinions of the author. I have extracted parts which focused on canons. I like this question: How could 500 monks have agreed on 45 years of the Buddha’s words?
These scrolls are incontrovertible proof that as early as the first century B.C.E., there was another significant living Buddhist tradition in a separate region of India and in an entirely different language from the tradition preserved in Pali.
Cox suggests that “rather than asking the question what single language did the Buddha use and what represents the earliest version of his teachings, we might have to accept that from the very beginning there were various accounts of his teachings, different sutras, and different versions of sutras transmitted in different areas. Early Buddhists in different regions shared many texts in common. Clearly, Buddhist monks of different language traditions in early India were in contact, and they traded ideas and influenced each other in complex ways.
First of all, there are certain practical difficulties of oral transmission in a time before digital recording. How could 500 monks have agreed on 45 years of the Buddha’s words?
“Buddhists themselves were aware of the fact that at some point in history their texts must have been shaped by somebody into the standard form they now have, beginning Thus have I heard. Who this was, we don’t know.”
Interestingly, built into the traditional account of the First Council is the story of one monk who arrived late. He asked the others what he had missed. When they told him how they had formalized the Buddha’s teachings, he objected. He insisted that he himself had heard the Buddha’s discourses and would continue to remember them as he had heard them.
In such a picture of textual transmission—fluid, dynamic, and intermingled—where and how could one stake a territorial claim? Sectarian posturing is based on having the actual words of the Buddha—complete, stable, unmediated, and self-contained. Once all one can have is a complex of versions of the Buddha’s words—partial, changing, shaped, and commingled with other versions—in what sense would it be authoritative if one’s own version was bottled upstream or down?
Certainly it would be good to know what the Buddha said. To the extent that we share the conventions of 5th-century B.C.E. Indians, we might understand some of what he meant. If we increased the conventions we shared with them (say, by learning early Indian languages or by studying history), obviously we would understand more. But context is vast—an unbounded, interdependent web of connections. And it is dynamic, shifting moment to moment. Context is finished the moment it happens; then it is a new context. We really can’t recreate it. And even if we could, we still wouldn’t know exactly how the Buddha was using his words within that context, so we wouldn’t know exactly what he meant.
My comment:
There is no doubt (proven by archaeological finds) that many schools existed starting with Buddha's inner circle of disciples who had formed schools when Buddha was alive. 45 years is a long time for many of his disciples and followers to do different things! Buddha mentioned this many times in the sutras giving guidelines of dharma teaching and advice on how one is to view dharma. Upon his death, The Buddha was hesitant to name a successor because that would mean he endorsed a particular school! After his death, the disciples split to different regions bringing their schools and their students; some succeeded, failed, merged; and new ones formed.
Originally posted by 2009novice:http://www.tricycle.com/feature/whose-buddhism-truest
Check this out... not sure if some of you have read before..
Sometime probably around 1994, looters unearthed 29 birch bark scrolls somewhere in eastern Afghanistan or northwest Pakistan, an area once known as Gandhara—a Buddhist cultural hotspot during the early Christian era
The curators studied the birch barks and initial findings could date back as long as 2000 years or more... mahayana texts..!
Click to pg 2 and you see the model has changed - a tree-like model to bush-like model: how Buddhism spread... and schools developed
Interesting! Thanks for sharing.