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The bristling Gothic text an ambush of secret, exciting, formidable things. The titles flamed; flags of strange battles; signals of strange ships; challenging, enticing to the dangerous adventure. After the first enchantment, the Buddhist Suttas and the Upanishads were no good. Nor yet the Vedanta.
They are not all sermons and are of varying character, antiquity and interest, the reason why they are grouped together being simply their length . In some of them we may fancy that we catch an echo of Gotama's own words, but in others the legendary character is very marked. Thus the Mahâsamaya and Aṭânâṭiya suttas are epitomes of popular mythology tacked on to the history of the Buddha.
The practice of tranquillizing the mind by regulating the breathing is recommended repeatedly in Suttas which seem ancient and authentic; for instance, in the instruction given by the Buddha to his son Râhula . On the other hand, his account of his fruitless self-mortification shows that the exercise even in its extreme forms is not sufficient to secure enlightenment.
But still the onus probandi lies with those who maintain the Sinhalese origin of any part of the Pali Canon and two strong arguments support the Indian origin of the major part. First, many suttas not only show an intimate knowledge of ancient Indian customs but discuss topics such as caste, sacrifice, ancient heresies, and the value of the Veda which would be of no interest to Sinhalese.
There again she fell into her old ways, and had a son by king Bimbisara; but she was won over by Buddha to virtue and chastity, renounced the world, and attained to the state of an Arhat. See the earliest account of Ambapali's presentation of the garden in "Buddhist Suttas," pp. 30-33, and the note there from Bishop Bigandet on pp. 33, 34.
But for all that they are interesting and ancient. Many of the suttas, especially the first thirteen, are rearrangements of old materials put together by a considerable literary artist who lived many generations after the Buddha.
The remaining collections, the Saṃyutta and Anguttara, classify the Buddha's utterances under various headings and presuppose older documents which they sometimes quote . The Saṃyutta consists of a great number of suttas, mostly short, combined in groups treating of a single subject which may be either a person or a topic.
The Suttas may preserve his teaching and some of his words but they are probably rearrangements made for recitation. Still it is impossible to prove that he did not himself adopt this style, particularly when age and iteration had made the use of certain formulæ familiar to him.
On these journeys he was accompanied by a considerable following of disciples: five hundred or twelve hundred and fifty are often mentioned and though the numbers may be exaggerated there is no reason to doubt that the band was large. The suttas generally commence with a picture of the surroundings in which the discourse recorded was delivered.
Apprehensions are expressed that suttas will be lost if monks neglect to learn them by heart . From inscriptions of the third century B.C. are quoted words like Petakî, a reciter of the Pitakas or perhaps of one Pitaka: Suttântika and Suttântakinî, a man or woman who recites the suttantas: Pancanekâyika, one who recites the five Nikâyas.
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