Thirty_Years_of_Buddhist_studies,Conze

4 Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies
well claim to represent the teaching of the Buddha. If the
Canon of one school only, that of the Theravadins, has reached
us intact and in its entirety, this is not due to its greater antiquity
or intrinsic merit, but to the accidents of historical
transmission. The fanatical fury of the Mohammedans which
destroyed all Buddhist documents in Northern India never
reached Ceylon. The Scriptures of the Northern schools were
largely lost, and fragments only are preserved in Sanskrit
manuscripts from Nepal and Tibet, and chiefly in Chinese and
Tibetan translations. In England the Pali Scriptures in addition
owe much of their position to the further accident that they
caught the eye of British administrators, and have almost
completely been translated by the devoted zeal of the Pali Text
Society. In the perspective of those who only read English, the
Theravadins have therefore come to occupy a quite disproportionate
importance.
One of the main advances in the period under review is that
the writings of at least two of the other schools, of the Sarvastivadins
and Mahasanghikas, have been made more accessible to
European readers. The Sarvastivadins were for long the
dominant school in India. Prof. Waldschmit and other German
scholars have edited, and are editing, many of their most
important canonical writings, which the sands of Turkestan
have preserved in their Sanskrit form. Of quite outstanding
value is Prof, Waldschmidt's work on the Mahaparinirvdnasutra,
which describes the events connected with the Buddha 1 s
last days. Not only has he published a sumptuous edition of the
Sanskrit text, with the Pali and versions from a Tibetan and
Chinese Vinaya in parallel columns, 1 but we also owe him a
most careful analysis of the material. 2 Three-quarters of the
text, so he shows (p. 336), have a common basis, which has,
however, in many places been worked over at a later time. We
may conclude that these common parts go back to 250 B.C.,
if not further. 3 It is quite obvious that in future this rich
1 Das Mahaparinirvdpasutra, 1950-1, three vols., Abh, d. dtschen
Ak.