99 



are supreme among doctrines ; and they are moreover the pure (very) 

 word of Buddha, without retrenchment or addition. The doctrines 

 which have arisen from it are like the thorns of a tree. 



" There were no (heresies) in the first century (anno Buddha), but in 

 the second, seventeen sprung up in the religion of Buddha."* 



With the results of the third Council— the Vinaya, the Sutra, 

 and the Abhidhamma, recompiled, collated, and made conformable 

 with those of the two Councils which preceded it,— Mahinda and 

 his fellow missionaries went forth to foreign countries as propa- 

 gandists of the Buddhist faith. 



These books, the Tripitaka, or sacred Baskets, describe with 

 great minuteness Buddha's journeyings to and fro, and the occasions 

 which gave rise to his ordinances and discourses ; and their contents 

 are essentially the same to this day, whether found in Ceylon, in 

 Burmah, in Siam, in Cash mire, in Nepaul, in Thibetia, or in China. 

 Under the circumstances stated, and with the conviction that they 

 were written documents, we feel assured that no important event' 

 in the life of Buddha, or in the establishment of his religion, can 

 have been omitted from them. But in none of them is any mention 

 made of Buddha having ever visited Ceylon ; or, of his having 

 left a memorial of himself, which as a monument worthy of 

 adoration could not, and would not, escape particular notice. 



That Mahinda and his associates had with them, on their arrival in 

 Ceylon, a copy of the Tripitaka, as well as the Attakatha, written 

 in the Pali language, there can be no reasonable doubt. I The asser- 



* Alwis's Introduction to Kachchayana's Pali Grammar, Appendix, pp. 66 — 69. 



f There is a tradition in Ceylon which speaks of the first introduction of 

 writing in the island in the reign of the king Devananpiyatissa, — See Asiatic Re- 

 searches, vol. Vii. p. 422. That this tradition was well founded, and arose from the 

 mission of Mahinda with the Pitakas in his possession, as well as from the Com- 

 ments he wrote upon them in Sinhalese, is extremely likely. The Mongol author, 

 Ssanang Ssetsen, in his account of the propagation of Buddhism in Ca9hmire 

 indicates that the Pitakas were also first carried thither in a written form. " This 



