e gods, and this seems
a polite way of hinting that it was more than any human congregation
could tolerate or understand. Still throughout the long history of
Buddhism it has always been respected as the most profound portion of
the scriptures and has not failed to find students. This Pitaka includes
the Katha-vatthu, attributed to Tissa Moggaliputta who is said to have
composed it about 250 B.C. in Asoka's reign[611].

There is another division of the Buddhist scriptures into nine _angas_
or members, namely: 1. Suttas. 2. Geyya: mixed prose and verse. 3.
Gatha: verse. 4. Udana: ecstatic utterances. 5. Veyyakarana:
explanation. 6. Itivuttaka: sayings beginning with the phrase "Thus said
the Buddha." 7. Jataka: stories of former births. 8. Abbhutadhamma:
stories of wonders. 9. Vedalla: a word of doubtful meaning, but perhaps
questions and answers. This enumeration is not to be understood as a
statement of the sections into which the whole body of scripture was
divided but as a description of the various styles of composition
recognized as being religious, just as the Old Testament might be said
to contain historical books, prophecies, canticles and so on.
Compositions in these various styles must have been current before the
work of collection began, as is proved by the fact that all the _angas_
are enumerated in the Majjhima-Nikaya[612].

2

This Tripitaka is written in Pali[613] which is regarded by Buddhist
tradition as the language spoken by the Master. In the time of Asoka the
dialect of Magadha must have been understood over the greater part of
India, like Hindustani in modern times, but in some details of grammar
and phonetics Pali differs from Magadhi Prakrit and seems to have been
influenced by Sanskrit and by western dialects. Being a literary rather
than a popular language it was probably a mixed form of speech and it
has been conjectured that it was elaborated in Avanti or in Gandhara
where was the great Buddhist University of Takshasila. Subsequently it
died out as a literary language in India[614] but in Ceylon, Burma, Siam
and Camboja it became the vehicle of a considerable religious and
scholastic literature. The language of Asoka's inscriptions in the third
century B.C. is a parallel dialect, but only half stereotyped. The
language of the Mahavastu and some Mahayanist texts, often called the
language of the Gathas, seems to be another vernacular brought more or
less into conformity with Sanskrit. It