[Y-Indology] On Mr. Malaiya's comments

[Guest guest]

Dear Troy,

 

I do believe you are trying to get me into trouble with Richard :-)

 

><<Is there any significance in the published assertion that the vast

>majority of the textual evidence for the Pali Canon comes from

>manuscripts less than three hundred years old?>>

>

>> I think it is exceptionally silly.

>

>It was Boden Professor of Sanskrit (Oxford) Richard F. Gombrich who

>published the remark. _How Buddhism Began (The Conditioned Genesis of

>the Early Teachings)_ (1997), 15.

 

He doesn't state it in quite the way you put it. In fact, his overall

position is very different to the case you are arguing.

 

>

>> Major parts of the contents of the texts are confirmed by

>> commentaries and subcommentaries.

>

>Gombrich remarks that "the commentators only quote or comment on a

>minority of the words in the texts." (Ibid.)

 

Quite true. To illustrate what this means in English: if the original

has a sentence like: 'on one occasion the Buddha was living in

Benares', the commentaries (after the first discourse) will probably

on comment on the word Benares. This might give one word commented on

and eight not specifically commented on. But it will be perfectly

clear even without the original what the original must have said.

However, there is a lot of variation and texts towards the end of a

collection are commented on much less than those at the beginning.

 

>Also, Is it generally correct to assert that the commentators

>themselves lived 8 or 9 centuries after the texts were allegedly

>spoken, and about 500 yrs after the majority of these memorized

>discourses were first committed to writing?

>

 

Well, yes and no. My own view is that Buddhaghosa probably lived in

the early fourth century A.D.; so about 400 years after the writing

down of the Canon. But the important point to note here is that

Buddhaghosa was translating the commentaries, not inventing them.

 

Lance Cousins