>
>Dear Stephen,
>The Buddha did not teach the Dhamma for scholars to wrangle over or
>as an object of academic interest.
>The Theravada Bhikkhus over the 2600 years of this Buddhasasana have
>faithfully preserved the Dhamma for us to learn from. And we should
>have the utmost gratitude that they were not swayed to alter it or
>add to it.
>RobertK

Dear Robert,

Thank you for your expression of gratitude. I also feel gratitude to
the Bikkhusangha for maintaining the vinaya unbroken for two and half
millenia, and for transmitting the teachings to our day.

I agree (and I suspect Stephen does as well) that the Dharma is above
all meant to be practiced. However we also can see that there are
variant readings of many sections in the Tipitaka in different
manuscript traditions. So one way or another, the texts have been
altered, added to, taken away from. And as Stephen mentioned, there
are versions of Tipitaka texts preserved in Sanksrit, Gandhari and
other languages. These also can differ. Somewhere along the line
things have been altered or added. No amount of pious wishing can
alter that basic fact.

Even within just the Pali tradition, the canonical status of some
books is disputed. In Burma the Nettipakarana is considered part of
the Tipitaka. Not so in Sri Lanka. So again, at some point, someone
has altered or added.

In a situation such as this it is not surprising that there are
people who devote their working lives to learning and studying these
texts, trying to sort out which are the best variants, correct
scribal mistakes, and shed light on passages which are currently not
understood. The editions which we use in our Pali studies are
themselves the results of such 'wrangling' among scholars. Without
their transcriptions, their editorial work, their dictionaries, their
grammars, their translations, many of us would never have even been
able to dream of starting to read Pali.

For that reason I think that alongside our immeasurable debt of
gratitude to the Bhikkhusangha, and above all its founder Gotama
Buddha, we might also wish to spare some gratitude for the scholars
who have worked to make it easier for people like us to read the Pali
Canon and its ancillary works. They have done great merit and we are
reaping the rewards of their work here and now. If our wranglings are
not as constructive as theirs, well, we have to start somewhere and
learn as best we can.

best regards,

/ET