Hi Derek,

I don't know the methods by which scholars date the various parts of
the Canon. The point you made about "no view" and "right view" is
interesting and I must check on the Atthakavaggo. About the Noble
Eightfold Path being added later on in the Buddha's teaching career,
it reminds me of something I read about a commentary made by Mrs.
Rhys-Davis (I don't remember where I read it) that the Buddha did not
teach the Four Noble Truths! So much for interpretations and
speculations about historical or cronological events. I would like
to ask whether it is necessary that all suttas must necessarily
follow chronologically through examination of the linguistic and
metrical analysis? I have always accepted that the first sutta
taught by the Buddha was the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta and the
second the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta. In fact, my saddha that the Buddha
was truly enlightened includes the fact that everything else that
follows in all the Nikayas never contradict the substance of the
first sutta, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. In other religious
traditions, one comes across things taught in later periods which
apparently go against earlier teachings - as if the teacher was still
discovering new "truths".

Regards,

Khaik-Cheang Oo

--- In Pali@..., "Derek Cameron" <derekacameron@...> wrote:
> Dear Pali people,
>
> Reading the A.t.thakavaggo (Sn IV) I am struck by the enormous gulf
> between the "No View" position it advocates, and the "Right View"
> position repeatedly stressed in the first four Nikaaya-s.
>
> I have read that, on linguistic and metrical grounds, the
> A.t.thakavaggo (Sn IV) is probably one of the oldest parts of the
> Canon. This might lead to the conjecture that, early on in the
> Buddha's teaching career, "Buddhist doctrine" had not yet been
> formally stated. Perhaps the Noble Eightfold Path, including of
> course "Right View," did not exist at the time the A.t.thakavaggo
was
> composed.
>
> Yet the Buddha's two very first discourses -- the
> Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta (SN LVI.11) and the Anatta-lakhana Sutta
> (SN XXII.59) -- include all the key points (Middle Way, Four Noble
> Truths, Noble Eightfold Path, Anicca, Anatta, Dukkha) of "Buddhist
> doctrine."
>
> If those two Suttas were actually delivered in the form we now have
> them -- and that is of course a major assumption -- then the Buddha
> did indeed teach Right View from the very beginning.
>
> (The alternative is that "Buddhist doctrine" was retrospectively
> inserted into two very bare-bones accounts of the Buddha re-
> encountering the Group of Five.)
>
> Thanissaro Bhikkhu, in his notes published at Access to Insight,
> reconciles No View and Right View with the raft analogy -- Right
View
> is only needed until one has reached the far shore.
>
> If that is true, then where does it leave the A.t.thakavaggo? As a
> teaching for superior people who had no need of the N8FP, etc.?
>
> Perhaps some light can be shed on all these questions by
considering
> the process of Sangha formation.
>
> In the early days, when the Buddha's followers were very few, there
> can have been no need for the institution of a formalized Sangha,
> with precepts, patimokkha, ceremonies, etc.
>
> Is it possible that, as the Sangha became formalized, some of the
> Buddha's earliest disciples went their own way, carrying
> the "superior" teachings with them? I have also read that it is
known
> that the entire Sangha (which must have by then been huge) was not
> present at the First Council, when the process of Canon formation
> began.
>
> All this is a very long-winded way of arriving at my real question,
> which is ...
>
> "Whatever happened to Añña Kondañña?"
>
> If anyone has the time, inclination, and a copy of the CSCD, I'd be
> interested to know where, apart from the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta
> (SN LVI.11) and the Anatta-lakhana Sutta (SN XXII.59) there is
> mention of the terms:
>
> (1) "kondañño" or "kondañña" etc (Kondañña)
>
> (2) "pañca vaggi" or "pañcavaggi" etc (The Group of Five)
>
> Thank you,
>
> Derek.