tween Yajnavalkya and his
wife, is incorporated in both the first and the second collection. Thus
our text represents the period when the Taittiriyas brought their
philosophic thoughts together in a complete form, but that period was
preceded by another in which slightly different schools each had their
own collection and for some time before this the various maxims and
dialogues must have been current separately. Since the conversation
between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi occurs in almost the same form in two
collections, it probably once existed as an independent piece.

In Buddhist literature the composite and tertiary character of the Sutta
Pitaka is equally plain. The various Nikayas are confessedly collections
of discourses. The two older ones seem dominated by the desire to bring
before the reader the image of the Buddha preaching: the Samyutta and
Anguttara emphasize the doctrine rather than the teacher and arrange
much the same matter under new headings. But it is clear that in
whatever form the various sermons, dialogues and dissertations appear,
that form is not primary but presupposes compilers dealing with an oral
tradition already stereotyped in language. For long passages such as the
tract on morality and the description of progress in the religious life
occur in several discourses and the amount of matter common to different
Suttas and Nikayas is surprising. Thus nearly the whole of the long
Sutta describing the Buddha's last days and death[64], which at first
sight seems to be a connected narrative somewhat different from other
Suttas, is found scattered in other parts of the Canon.

Thus our oldest texts whether Brahmanic or Buddhist are editions and
codifications, perhaps amplifications, of a considerably older oral
teaching. They cannot be treated as personal documents similar to the
Koran or the Epistles of Paul.

The works of middle antiquity such as the Epics, Puranas, and Mahayanist
sutras were also not produced by one author. Many of them exist in more
than one recension and they usually consist of a nucleus enveloped and
sometimes itself affected by additions which may exceed the original
matter in bulk. The Mahabharata and Prajnaparamita are not books in the
European sense: we cannot give a date or a table of contents for the
first edition[65]: they each represent a body of literature whose
composition extended over a long period. As time goes on, history
naturally grows clearer and literary per