Some people, especially Christians and Muslims could make the argument that the Tipitaka is corrupt because of a larger gap from the Buddha’s parinibbana to the writing down of the Tipitaka. And they do make this argument.
I do believe that it is almost impossible to corrupt the Tipitaka through the years of oral preservation because of the rigorous oral methods the Theravada Sangha has and has practiced and is still practicing.
Can someone answer this argument they make, as to refute them?
This is one of the areas where EBT does show “some” merit. There are versions in the Āgamas which are strikingly similar… very similar. However, this field of study has sort of reversed its course from faith-affirming to doubt-creating by taking texts that have been translated into several languages from corrupt traditions as an authority, rather than taking the complete Pāḷi as an authority.
The texts were chanted in groups. They had different groups of specialization. They had the Dīgha reciters, the Majjhima reciters, etc. When multiple people chant the same thing, it is far easier than one person. Each monk chanting rechecks and reminds the other of the exact pronunciation and spelling (Sri Lankan is different from Myanmar pronunciation, but the letters are the same).
You can research RAID 5 and understand a little bit about redundancy.
Lastly, there are people in the world who are Tipiṭaka-dharas, and they are certified by having unbelievable memories. Not only that, there are people who have Historical Memories (HSAM) that are also unbelievable. It just comes down to those who have faith and those who lack faith. The question is… why bother speaking to these people?
With regard to the chronological gap, Christians and Muslims are hardly in a position to place themselves outside this problem. If anything, their situation is considerably more difficult when compared with Buddhism in India, which developed within, and benefited from, strong oral traditions and rigorous methods of oral transmission. The Indian tradition was not merely a matter of memorization and repetition; it constituted a systematic and highly structured mode of instruction and transmission.
Christians are among the last people who can seriously talk about chronological gaps; Christianity has faced them as well. According to conservative Christian dating, the 4 canonical Gospels are said to have been written roughly during the 1st century CE. Yet, from the perspective of textual criticism and in light of the evidence available to us today, this claim is difficult to sustain. The earliest form of the NT text that can be reconstructed from the surviving evidence does not, at the earliest, take us beyond the beginning of the 3rd century CE. This raises questions not only about the reliability of the text itself, but also about doctrines that rest upon particular textual formulations. Textual disagreements become especially apparent when certain passages are translated into modern languages. Christians today cannot simply open a critical edition of the NT and read every line as though its wording were entirely certain; competing readings frequently make the precise meaning of a passage difficult to determine, and some of these variants have direct implications for Church doctrine and traditional claims concerning the authority and inerrancy of Scripture.
The debate in academic circles is no longer simply about “whether the biblical text contains corruptions or alterations.” Textual variation has been an established fact for decades, and the authorship of the NT writings remains anonymous or disputed. What many Christian apologists now attempt to argue is that, despite the textual uncertainty reflected in modern critical editions, the text nevertheless preserves the “essential message” of their faith, an assertion that is itself remarkably vague and difficult to define. The task of textual scholars has been to recover, as far as possible, the original or earliest attainable text by drawing upon Greek manuscripts, patristic citations, ancient translations, and every other available witness. Yet no original autograph has been recovered with certainty.
What makes the matter still more complicated is that the NT textual tradition does not consist merely of unintentional scribal errors; it also contains numerous deliberate alterations that entered the tradition for theological and ecclesiastical reasons, sometimes favouring positions that later came to be associated with the victorious Church and its doctrinal establishment.
Epp, Eldon Jay. Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism. Vol. 2: Collected Essays, 2006–2017. Leiden: Brill, 2021, p. 714
Deliberate textual alteration occurs when a scribe intentionally intervenes in a text, changing what he considers to require improvement or correction according to what he believes to be the proper reading. Such intervention can take many forms. A scribe may alter the grammar, style, or spelling; he may harmonize one text with another similar or parallel passage, especially among the Gospels, a practice that itself contributed to numerous alterations and omissions serving doctrinal purposes. He may also intervene to resolve what he perceives as a geographical or historical contradiction, of which the Gospels contain many examples.
As for the Qurʾanic manuscripts, however, they do not suffer from this particular problem. Nevertheless, they face severe criticism that undermines everything concerning them, particularly the chronological reordering of the text and the development of the text in stages until it reached a fixed form, in addition to much of what it contains that contradicts itself in matters of its own composition, such as the many words of Syriac origin, whereas the text claims that it was revealed in a purely Arabic language. I will not dwell on this at length, as this is a long and complicated issue, in addition to the numerous other problems surrounding it.
This is not even to mention the fact that they have no systematic oral tradition, nor that one would be hard-pressed to find a single Christian today who has memorized all of their sacred scriptures, whereas there are thousands of Venerable Tipiṭakadharas today who have memorized the entire Canon, word for word, line by line.
So, Meh. Don’t wear yourself out trying to argue with them, honestly. Most of them have an intellectual level that barely exceeds that of a chicken.
This stands in contrast to the Pali MSS, which do not face these same problems of textual preservation and critical verification, owing to the fact that the Theravāda tradition relied upon councils convened to address any textual difficulties that arose. The process eventually ceased to be merely one of oral recitation and became one that also involved the critical collation of manuscripts and the production of critical editions.
The Buddhist Theravāda Councils, and the Preservation of the Buddha’s Teachings
Theravāda councils, particularly within the Sri Lankan tradition, played an essential role in preserving the texts and regulating their transmission through communal recitation and textual review. The effect of this process remains evident to this day: take any text and examine it in any Theravādin country, and you will not find any discrepancies in its reading. One of the principal motivations behind these efforts was to prevent the loss of the text or the introduction of alterations during the process of transmission.
Anyone who reads the Tipitaka can see that a lot of effort was put into memorising it and recording it. All the different forms of Buddhism still have the 4 Noble Truths in them and the 3 characteristics of impermanance, suffering and not self ( anicca, dukkha, anatta). They all have the belief in kamma and rebirth etc too. The main point is that the Dhamma and Vinaya get their authenticity from another source. People can realise all of it themselves. The truth hasn’t changed and any one with a little wisdom can practise generosity, virtue and meditation and see results in their own lives immediately. So no one questions the periodic table or existence of electricity because it is verifiable. The Dhamma is also verifiable in the present. Not as easily as scientific truths maybe, but very verifiable. All it takes is a little patience and effort. Ven Ananda and Upali did a wonderful thing in the Buddha’s lifetime. I was at a Temple in Halong vietnam yesterday and reading these inscriptions of the famous disciple monks from Mahayana lineage which all goes back to Ananda and to the Buddha too. Obviously the transmission has changed in emphasis and language overtime but the Theravadin lineage and texts appear to be the best thanks to Ananda and his descendant monks. We are blessed that in this era we have more access to information than anyone had in the past so we can assess the information in a way no one else has been able to do before. Read with an open mind and look for the treasure that the Dhamma brings in your own life.
