Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 11.djvu/28

xxii that not only the Four Noble Truths, but the whole of the Seven Jewels of the Law, may already be placed, with certainty, in the latter category.

The form, in which these Suttas have been preserved, deserves careful attention. Every reader will be struck at once with the constant repetitions. These repetitions are not essential, and are merely designed to facilitate the learning of the Suttas by heart. Writing was unknown in the age of the Buddha, and probably for long after his time. In all probability indeed, just as the Indians learnt from the Greeks, not the art of coinage, but the custom of issuing a legally authorised coinage ; so it was from the Greeks that they acquired, if not their earliest alphabet, at least the knowledge of the utility of writing. But even for some time after writing was generally known, it was considered a desecration to make use of it for the preservation of the sacred books. This feeling naturally passed away much sooner among the adherents of the popular religious faith of Buddhism, than it did among their conservative opponents. With the latter it is by no means extinct even now, and the first record we have of the Buddhist Scriptures being reduced into writing is the well-known passage in the Dîpavamsa, which speaks of their being recorded in books in Ceylon towards the beginning of the first century before the commencement of our era. And as all our copies of the Buddhist Pitakas are, at present, derived from those then in use in Ceylon, we are practically concerned only with those thus referred to in the Dîpavamsa.

The date of the Dîpavamsa may be placed approximately in the fourth century of our era; but its author reproduces the continued tradition of the monasteries in