42 The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools
'sanskritization' ('translation' is too strong here since the order
of difference between Middle Indian and Sanskrit is similar
to that between modern English and Chaucer's or Mallory's
English). Although basically Middle Indo-Aryan, the language
of the Pali canon is thus something of a hybrid, preserving lin-
guistic features of several dialects and showing some evidence
of sanskritization.
Theravada Buddhist tradition traces the Pali canon back to a
recension of Buddhist scriptures brought from northern India
to Sri Lanka in the third century BCE by Mahinda, a Buddhist
monk who was the son of the emperor Asoka. Mahinda and his
company brought no books, the texts being in their heads, but
the tradition is that the Pali.texts were subsequently written down
for the first time in the first century BCE. The historical value of
this tradition is uncertain. Most scholars would be sceptical of
the suggestion that the Pali canon existed exactly as we have it
today already in the middle of third century BCE. We know, how-
ever, that what the commentators had before them in the fifth
century CE in Sri Lanka corresponded fairly exactly to what we
have now, and the original north Indian provenance and relative
antiquity of much of the Pali canon seems to be guaranteed on
linguistic grounds.U Significant portions of the material it con-
tains must go back to the third century BeE:
How many other versions or recensions of the canon of Bud-
dhist scriptures existed in partially or more fully sanskritized
Middle Indian dialects is unclear. The Pali canon is the only
one to survive apparently complete in an Indian language. Of
the other ancient Indian versions of the canon, we have only
isolated fragments and portions in the original Indian languages.
More substantial portions are, however, preserved in translation
especially in the Chinese Tripitaka. This, along with what Bud-
dhist literature as a whole reveals about its own history, allows
us to know something of the content of these other ancient
Indian canons and also to identify the generally more archaic
material-material that must be relatively close in time to the
ancient Rajagrha recitation. This material takes the form of the
four primary Nikayas or 'collections' of the Buddha's discourses
