--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Stephen Hodge" <s.hodge@...> wrote:

> > The whole of the above seems rather naive, ill-informed and a

tad emotional.

> You seem to see things in very lurid black and white terms with

little

> understanding of human nature.
> -- every time a text
> is copied by hand some errors creep in and these accumulate.

Again, when a

> line was dropped from a text by one scribe, he or another might

write it in

> the margin with a little mark in the body text to indicate where it
> belonged. Unfortunately, commentorial annotations in the form of

marginalia

> were sometimes confused with corrections and become incorporated

into the

> text by scribes.

++++++++++++
Dear Stephen,
I accept that small copyist errors could have crept into the
Tipitaka. But it seems unlikely that a whole section of the
Tipitaka - the Dhammasangani could have been formed in this way.

You might have read some of the articles by western
Buddhist "scholars" of the 19th century. They ridiculed the idea
that the Theravada texts that were being translated from Sri Lanka
could possibly be accurate records of the Buddha. Indeed they used
the same arguments you have above. However some hard evidence was
supplied by the Asokan pillars and since then many 'scholars'
decided that the texts were carefully kept since Asokan times but
prior to that all these 'mistakes' crept in.
However, the fact that in the 23 centuries since Asoka monks were
able to preserve the teachings so well would indicate to me that
they were able to do so in the 3 centuries immediately after the
Buddha's death - especially as this was a time when genuine arahants
were common.
You see no difference between any texts whether they come from
Mahayana sources or Theravada. All I can say is that I do see a
difference and that I am perfectly confident that the Theravada
sangha have carefully preserved the word of the Buddha.
RobertK