are preachers of
the Dhamma and others who know the Sutta: of laymen who have learnt a
particular suttanta and are afraid it will fall into oblivion unless
others learn it from them. Apprehensions are expressed that suttas will
be lost if monks neglect to learn them by heart[623]. From inscriptions
of the third century B.C.[624] are quoted words like Petaki, a reciter
of the Pitakas or perhaps of one Pitaka: Suttantika and Suttantakini, a
man or woman who recites the suttantas: Pancanekayika, one who recites
the five Nikayas. All this shows that from the early days of Buddhism
onwards a succession of persons made it their business to learn and
recite the doctrine and disciplinary rules and, considering the
retentiveness of trained memories, we have no reason to doubt that the
doctrine and rules have been preserved without much loss[625].

Not, however, without additions. The disadvantage of oral tradition is
not that it forgets but that it proceeds snowball fashion, adding with
every generation new edifying matter. The text of the Vedic hymns was
preserved with such jealous care that every verse and syllable was
counted. But in works of lesser sanctity interpolations and additions
were made according to the reciters' taste. We cannot assign to the
Mahabharata one date or author, and the title of Upanishad is no
guarantee for the age or authenticity of the treatises that bear it.
Already in the Anguttara-Nikaya[626], we hear of tables of contents and
the expression is important, for though we cannot give any more precise
explanation of it, it shows that care was taken to check the contents of
the works accepted as scripture. But still there is little doubt that
during the two or three centuries following the Buddha's death, there
went on a process not only of collection and recension but also of
composition.

An account of the formation of the canon is given in the last two
chapters of the Cullavagga[627]. After the death of the Buddha his
disciples met to decide what should be regarded as the correct doctrine
and discipline. The only way to do that was to agree what had been the
utterances of the master and this, in a country where the oral
transmission of teaching was so well understood, amounted to laying the
foundations of a canon. Kassapa cross-examined experts as to the
Buddha's precepts. For the rules of discipline Upali was the chief
authority and we read how he was asked where such and such a rule--for
instanc