that longer texts may be forthcoming. Those
already made known are partly Mahayanist and partly similar to the Pali
Canon though not a literal translation of it. It is not clear to what
extent the Buddhists of Central Asia regarded the Hina and Mahayanist
scriptures as separate and distinct. Probably each school selected for
itself a small collection of texts as authoritative[599].

_(3)_ The Chinese Canon. This is a gigantic collection of Buddhist works
made and revised by order of various Emperors. The imperial imprimatur
is the only standard of canonicity. The contents include translations of
works belonging to all schools made from the first to the thirteenth
century A.D. The originals were apparently all in Sanskrit and were
probably the texts of which fragments have been found in Central Asia.
This canon also includes some original Chinese works.

(4) There is a somewhat similar collection of translations into Tibetan.
But whereas the Chinese Canon contains translations dated from 67 A.D.
onwards, the Tibetan translations were made mainly in the ninth and
eleventh centuries and represent the literature esteemed by the mediaeval
Buddhism of Bengal. Part at least of this Tibetan Canon has been
translated into Mongol.

Renderings of various books into Uigur, Sogdian, Kuchanese, "Nordarisch"
and other languages of Central Asia have been discovered by recent
explorers. It is probable that they are all derived from the Sanskrit
Canon and do not represent any independent tradition. The scriptures
used in Japan and Korea are simply special editions of the Chinese
Canon, not translations.

In the following pages I propose to consider the Pali Canon, postponing
until later an account of the others. It will be necessary, however, to
touch on the relations of Pali and Sanskrit texts.

The scriptures published by the Pali Text Society represent the canon of
the ancient sect called Vibhajjavadins and the particular recension of
it used at the monastery in Anuradhapura called Mahavihara. It is
therefore not incorrect to apply to this recension such epithets as
southern or Sinhalese, provided we remember that in its origin it was
neither one nor the other, for the major part of it was certainly
composed in India[600]. It was probably introduced into Ceylon in the
third century B.C. and it is also accepted in Burma, Siam and
Camboja[601]. Thus in a considerable area it is the sole and undisputed
version of the scriptures.