The article is a long one with many personal opinions of the
author. I have extracted parts which
focused on canons. I like this question:
How could 500 monks have agreed on 45 years of the
Buddha’s words?
These scrolls are
incontrovertible proof that as early as the first century B.C.E.,
there was another significant living Buddhist tradition in a
separate region of India and in an entirely different language from
the tradition preserved in Pali.
Cox suggests that “rather
than asking the question what single language did the Buddha use
and what represents the earliest version of his teachings, we might
have to accept that from the very beginning there were various
accounts of his teachings, different sutras, and different versions
of sutras transmitted in different areas. Early Buddhists in different regions shared many
texts in common. Clearly, Buddhist monks of different language
traditions in early India were in contact, and they traded ideas
and influenced each other in complex ways.
First of all, there are
certain practical difficulties of oral transmission in a time
before digital recording. How could 500
monks have agreed on 45 years of the Buddha’s
words?
“Buddhists themselves were
aware of the fact that at some point in history their texts must
have been shaped by somebody into the standard form they now have,
beginning Thus have I heard. Who
this was, we don’t know.”
Interestingly, built into
the traditional account of the First Council is the story of one
monk who arrived late. He asked the others what he had missed. When
they told him how they had formalized the Buddha’s teachings, he
objected. He insisted that he himself had heard the Buddha’s
discourses and would continue to remember them as he had heard
them.
In such a picture of textual
transmission—fluid, dynamic, and intermingled—where and how could
one stake a territorial claim? Sectarian posturing is based on
having the actual words of the
Buddha—complete, stable, unmediated, and self-contained. Once all
one can have is a complex of
versions of the Buddha’s words—partial, changing,
shaped, and commingled with other versions—in what sense would it
be authoritative if one’s own
version was bottled upstream or down?
Certainly it would be good
to know what the Buddha said. To the extent that we share the
conventions of 5th-century B.C.E. Indians, we might understand some
of what he meant. If we increased the conventions we shared with
them (say, by learning early Indian languages or by studying
history), obviously we would understand more. But context is
vast—an unbounded, interdependent web of connections. And it is
dynamic, shifting moment to moment. Context is finished the moment
it happens; then it is a new context. We really can’t recreate it.
And even if we could, we still wouldn’t know exactly how the Buddha
was using his words within that context, so we wouldn’t know
exactly what he meant.
My comment:
There is no doubt (proven by archaeological
finds) that many schools existed starting with Buddha's inner
circle of disciples who had formed schools when Buddha was alive.
45 years is a long time for many of his disciples and followers to
do different things! Buddha mentioned
this many times in the sutras giving guidelines of dharma teaching
and advice on how one is to view dharma. Upon his death, The Buddha
was hesitant to name a successor because that would mean he
endorsed a particular school! After his
death, the disciples split to different regions bringing their
schools and their students; some succeeded, failed, merged; and new
ones formed.