t, and we have no
grounds for rejecting or suspecting this opinion. According to tradition
Buddhaghosa was well versed in Sanskrit but deliberately preferred the
southern canon. The Mahayanist doctor Asanga cites texts found in the
Pali version, but not in the Sanskrit[640]. The monks of the Mahavihara
were probably too indulgent in admitting late scholastic treatises, such
as the Parivara. On the other hand they often showed a critical instinct
in rejecting legendary matter. Thus the Sanskrit Vinayas contain many
more miraculous narratives than the Pali Vinaya.

4

European critics have rarely occasion to discuss the credibility of
Sanskrit literature, for most of it is so poetic or so speculative that
no such question arises. But the Pitakas raise this question as directly
as the Gospels, for they give the portrait of a man and the story of a
life, in which an overgrowth of the miraculous has not hidden or
destroyed the human substratum. How far can we accept them as a true
picture of what Gotama was and taught?

Their credibility must be judged by the standard of Indian oral
tradition. Its greatest fault comes from that deficiency in historic
sense which we have repeatedly noticed. Hindu chroniclers ignore
important events and what they record drifts by in a haze in which
proportion, connection, and dates are lost. They frequently raise a
structure of fiction on a slight basis of fact or on no basis at all.
But the fiction is generally so obvious that the danger of historians in
the past has been not to be misled by it but to ignore the elements of
truth which it may contain. For the Hindus have a good verbal memory;
their genealogies, lists of kings and places generally prove to be
correct and they have a passion for catalogues of names. Also they take
a real interest in describing doctrine. If the Buddha has been
misrepresented, it is not for want of acumen or power of transmitting
abstruse ideas. The danger rather is that he who takes an interest in
theology is prone to interpret a master's teaching in the light of his
own pet views.

The Pitakas illustrate the strong and weak points of Hindu tradition.
The feebleness of the historical sense may be seen in the account of
Devadatta's doings in the Cullavagga[641] where the compiler seems
unable to give a clear account of what he must have regarded as
momentous incidents. Yet the same treatise is copious and lucid in
dealing with monastic rules, and the sayin