This article discusses the composition and transmission of early Buddhist texts with specific reference to sutras. After briefly summarizing the main reasons why it is likely that these oral ...compositions were designed to be memorized and transmitted verbatim, I will discuss the main types of changes that these texts underwent in the course of their transmission and the reasons such changes occurred, then attempt to give an account of the challenge that change, particularly intentional change, posed to the oral transmission of fixed, memorized texts.
The new G?ndh?r? manuscript finds from Afghanistan and Pakistan, which date from approximately the first century BCE to the third or fourth century CE, are the earliest manuscript witnesses to the ...literature of the Indian Buddhist nik?yas or schools. They preserve texts whose parallels are found in the various Tripi?akas, or what remains of them, preserved in other languages and belonging to various nik?yas, including sections of ?gamas such as the Ekottarik?gama and Vana-sa?yutta of the Sa?yutta-nik?ya/Sa?yukt?gama and anthologies of such s?tras, besides many texts that are not generally classed as "canonical", such as commentaries. These very early collections of texts raise questions concerning canon-formation, such as whether the Gandh?ran communities that produced these manuscripts had fixed ?gama collections and closed canons or whether this material witnesses a stage in which collections and canons were still relatively fluid and open, and whether these manuscripts, which span several centuries, witness a shift towards fixity. This paper addresses these issues and re-examines our understanding of the formation of the canons of the early Indian nik?yas in light of the new G?ndh?r? manuscript finds.
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