[Buddha-l] Chinese Canon

[L.S. Cousins]

Jack,

> Is the Chinese Canon merely a commentary on the Pali Canon and thus less
> authoritative (closer to the Buddha's intention)? Or, did parts of the 
> early
> canon got recorded in Chinese before the Pali was sometimes later 
> tampered
> with and that is why some of the differences in the Chinese canon can
> sometimes be more authoritative,
>
I'm afraid it is a lot more complicated than that.


Chinese translations vary in calibre depending on the translator. They 
may also translate in accordance with accepted meanings and hence in 
effect incorporate commentarial ideas. And of course the Chinese Canon 
contains a vast amount of definitely later material e.g. belonging to 
the Mahāyāna. But restricting ourselves to translations of Indian texts 
which were presumably part of the 'canonical' literature of some Indian 
school, some are based on Indian originals with as good a claim to 
antiquity as the Pali texts — they came from a different school or a 
different area to the Southern Indian tradition preserved in Pali. To 
over-simplify a little, we can say that they are the scriptures of 
schools established in areas which are now part of Northern Pakistan or 
nearby and they were written in Gāndhārī Prakrit or later in Sanskrit. 
The Pali Canon is a collection of the scriptures of a school established 
in what is now Sri Lanka and in parts of Southern India. Pali is 
basically a tidied up version of the standard written language used 
across most of what is now India in inscriptions from the second century 
B.C. until it is gradually displaced by Sanskrit over the course of the 
first millennium A.D.

So which is more authoritative. Well, Pali has a slight edge and of 
course the Pali texts are much more complete. But effectively we have to 
take it on a case by case basis. That said, the differences are often 
not that great in terms of the actual teachings.

Lance Cousins