Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Fa Hsien says that the Vinaya of the Mahâsanghikas was considered "the most complete with the fullest explanations." A translation of this text is contained in the Chinese Tripitaka . Early Indian Buddhism is said to have been divided into eighteen sects or schools, which have long ceased to exist and must not be confounded with any existing denominations.
The traditions indicate that the council to some extent sifted and revised the Tripitaka and perhaps it accepted the seven Abhidharma books of the Sarvâstivâdins. But it is not stated or implied that it composed or sanctioned Mahayanist books. Târanâtha merely says that such books appeared at this time and that the Hinayanists raised no active objection.
Aarne in Fennia, xxvii., 1-96, 1909, after a careful study of the numerous variants of the East and West, declares that the original contained three gifts and arose in southern Europe. From the three gifts came three persons and afterwards the form in which only two gifts occur. Against this is the earliest of the Tripitaka versions, 516 A.D., which has only two magic gifts.
The texts of the Tripitaka were collected and the Council "composed 100,000 stanzas of Upadeśa Śâstras explanatory of the canonical sûtras, 100,000 stanzas of Vinaya-vibhâshâ Śâstras explanatory of the Vinaya and 100,000 of Abhidharma-vibhâshâ Śâstras explanatory of the Abhidharma.
His translations have shown the scientific world that the originals of the Zend-Avesta, the sacred scriptures of the sun-worshippers, of Tripitaka, that of the Buddhists, and of Aytareya-Brahmanam, that of the Brahmans, were written in one and the same Sanskrit language; that all these three languages Zend, Nepalese, and the modern Brahman Sanskrit are more or less dialects of the first; that old Sanskrit is the origin of all the less ancient Indo-European languages, as well as of the modern European tongues and dialects; that the three chief religions of heathendom Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Brahmanism are mere heresies of the monotheistic teachings of the Vedas, which does not prevent them from being real ancient religions and not modern falsifications.
Among others is the Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth. The origin of that, as already indicated, is traceable to the Tripitaka, which, parenthetically, were so well known in Babylon that Gotama was there regarded as a Chaldean seer. That abridgement of the Law which is called the Golden Rule is also in the Talmud, as also, before the Talmud was, it was in the Tripitaka.
The boy shaved his head and received the precepts of the Ten-dai sect, but in his eighteenth year, waiving the prospect of obtaining the headship of the great denomination, he built a hut in the Black Ravine and there five times read through the five thousand volumes of the Tripitaka.
An even more remarkable thing is that each of these diminutive pagodas has also within it a portion of the Buddhist scriptures, engraved upon a solid block of stone, and all of these together make up the Tripitaka, upon which the Buddhist pins his faith. In the center of the grand enclosure stands a beautiful white pagoda, with wreaths of gold about its graceful spire.
See Nanjio's Catalogue of the Tripitaka, col. 417. This was the second summer since the pilgrims left Ch'ang-gan. We are now therefore, probably, in A.D. 400. Who this envoy was, and where he was going, we do not know. The text will not admit of any other translation. Le Hao was a native of Lung-se, a man of learning, able and kindly in his government.
There is still the Abhayagiri tope, the highest in Ceylon, according to Davids, 250 feet in height, and built about B.C. 90, by Watta Gamini, in whose reign, about 160 years after the Council of Patna, and 330 years after the death of Sakyamuni, the Tripitaka was first reduced to writing in Ceylon; "Buddhism," p. 234.
Word Of The Day