Indrajala wrote:Serenity509 wrote:
How can we know for certain that the Pali scriptures were based on an existing oral tradition but the Mahayana scriptures were not? That's all I'm asking.
They might have been based on an existing oral tradition, but the Pali canon is a translation of an earlier canon according to at least a few authorities on the subject, so whatever oral tradition existed beforehand was probably not in Pali. Moreover, by the time we can definitively date Pali scriptures writing had already existed in India for a few centuries at least.
Mahayana scriptures often speak of copying scriptures, which indicates an awareness and encouragement of writing, not memorization and transmission through oral recitation.
I imagine what happened was that an earlier oral tradition was kept intact and passed down through the generations until writing became an available and acceptable medium for transmission of Dharma, at which time it became possible to greatly expand on scriptures and add many layers of content to the vinaya, followed by Buddhist scholasticism (Abhidharma), the influences of which were inserted into scriptures later on (especially set numbers of items or concepts -- 18 dhatus, 12 ayatanas, etc.).
I would hesitate to say anything is based on an "earlier canon." What seems to me more likely is that each monastery would have people who know/have memorised a different set of texts, and that the "Pali canon" represents a tradition from Sri Lanka after a purging of Mahayana/other Buddhist texts around the 3rd or 4th century (when the same may have happened in India in certain monasteries, a claim that would rely largely upon Faxian's accounts, but also the character of early Mahayana texts). I am not sure that, outside of Sri Lanka, any of the Indian monasteries agreed upon a sutra canon - though, vinaya they very well may have been. But it does appear that there were, occasionally, views of what was
not canon.
I, with Malcom, don't think it is entirely unrealistic that writing was an aid to memorization - but I would be satisfied either way. What, perhaps, is more important, is, rather than the medium of textual transmission, rather the
emphasis placed by Mahayanists upon text, as opposed to other practices. This is something that the Mahayana sutras do differ from mainstream Buddhist texts on, by their very nature. Mahayana sutras are also self-conscious in a way that mainstream Buddhist texts never were - i.e. they refer to themselves extensively, e.g. what you should do to them, how you should use them, what their character/nature is (as a Buddha, Goddess, true Caitya, etc.). There is clearly a level of displacement as regards the mainstream Buddhist practices which Mahayanists are trying to advocate here - while not being
anti-stupa worship, and so forth, they are clearly trying to shift the emphasis to the text (trying to send the monks back to their books, as Schopen would put it).
This shift in emphasis makes more sense if the texts in question are physical - the injunctions we are speaking of put great emphasis on the care and curation of the text. If the Mahayana could survive without physical books, we wouldn't see this. Clearly, the main issue at hand in this regard is that the dharmabhanakas of mainstream Buddhism, who were by and large responsible for oral text transmission and teaching, were not willing to begin learning new sutras. The Mahayana, by all accounts, until the 5th century was very small, and largely made up of highly literate monks who shared a common interest, and was not large enough to facilitate the dharmabhanaka infrastructure required for the memorization and transmission of such large amounts of text. So the injunctions, which we should not ignore, put emphasis on, rather than memorization, the practices which will ensure the safety and longevity of the texts in book form. These are skilful devices which promote the survival and longevity of books, rather than orally transmitted texts.
That being said, we don't have the same kind of evidence for oral transmission that we do for textual transmission, so, as I said earlier, I wouldn't discount that some degree of oral transmission did occur - just that it clearly is not what the Mahayana sutras themselves are emphasising. Also, sorry to contradict you Malcom, but the sutras clearly are not entirely analytical, they're highly practical, and instructive of practice. Often the facts they present, which we might consider philosophical, are largely declarative in nature (not analytical, i.e. they don't come about through argumentation/reasoning). Analysis does exist to a large extent in sastra literature - which, while accepting some premises of the Mahayana sutras, doesn't go along with everything the sutra literature is presenting. It is important to be careful about conflating sastric with sutric claims. Anyway, if you're interested in further details on this model, please PM or email me.