[Buddha-l] MPNS (Morrison)

[Bruce Burrill]

 >it would seem that the bulk of the Nikayas / Agamas are a product of the 
monastics >and not the forest-dwellers

Very likely, given that monastics were far more organized for the job of 
preserving the texts.

 > -- Buddhism seems to have undergone rapid changes at the hands of the 
monastics, a > process that even started soon > after the Buddha's death.

Maybe, but exactly how much of a change is debatable. What you seem to be 
suggesting is that you can tease out what and how much of a change happened 
after the death of the Buddha. I wonder. Also, this change would have had 
to have been extremely rapid after the death of the Buddha. What is 
interesting is that we certainly do see changes in emphasis and style in 
the post sutta material such as the Buddhavamsa and other such texts.

If we can assume that the Buddha taught for 45 years, we can also assume 
that he was concerned with how his teachings were preserved and what was 
preserved. On all of this I tend to buy into Gombrich's point of view that 
the teachings that we do have (in the Pali sutta material and the Chinese 
equivalent) reflect -- very broadly -- what the Buddha taught, which is not 
say that there weren't emendations, changes, and corruptions, but I rather 
question if the changes to were to the broad doctrinal issues.

 > This is corroborated when one reads between the lines accounts of the 
last years > of poor old Ananda who outlived all the > other immediate 
disciples.

Again, this is something Gombrich points out that there is stuff in the 
suttas where the context and thusly the meanings were "lost" by following 
generations of Buddhists.

This is a very interesting, and fun, area of study and speculation, as is 
the rise of the Mahayana.