With regard to the Vinaya, I should even feel inclined to admit, with Dr. Oldenberg, that it must have existed in a more or less settled form before that time. What I doubt is whether such terms as Pitaka, basket, or Tipitaka, the three baskets, i.e. the canon, existed at that early time. They have not been met with, as yet, in any of the canonical books; and if the Dipavamsa (IV, 32) uses the word 'Tipitaka,' when describing the First Council, this is due to its transferring new terms to older times. If Dr. Oldenberg speaks of a Dvi-pitaka[2] as the name of the canon before the third basket, that of the Abhidhamma, was admitted, this seems to me an impossible name, because at the time when the Abhidhamma was not yet recognised as a third part of the canon, the word pitaka had probably no existence as a technical term[3].

We must always, I think, distinguish between the three portions of the canon, called the basket of the Suttas, the

[1. Feer, Revue Critique, 1870, No. 24, p. 377.

2. Introduction. pp. x, xii.

3. Dr. Oldenberg informs me that pitaka occurs in the Kankisuttanta in the Magghima Nikaya (Turnour's MS., fol. the), but applied to the Veda. He also refers to the tipitakakaryas mentioned in the Western Cave inscriptions as compared with the Pankanekayaka in the square Asoka character inscriptions (Cunningham, Bharhut, pl. lvi, No. 52). In the Sutrakrid-anga of the Gainas, too, the term pidagam occurs (MS. Berol. fol. 77 a). He admils, however, that pitaka or tipitaka, as the technical name of the Buddhist canon, has not yet been met with in that canon itself, and defends Dvipitaka only as a convenient term.]

p. xxxiii basket of Vinaya, and the basket of Abhidhamma, and the three subjects of Dhamma (sutta), Vinaya, and Abhidhamma, treated in these baskets. The subjects existed and were taught long before the three baskets were definitely arranged. Dhamma had originally a much wider meaning than Sutta-pitaka. It often means the whole teaching of Buddha; and even when it refers more particularly to the Sutta-pitaka, we know that the Dhamma there taught deals largely with Vinaya and Abhidhamma doctrines. Even the fact that at the First Council, according to the description given in the Kullavagga, the Vinaya and Dhamma only were rehearsed, though proving the absence at that time of the Abhidhamma, as a separate Pitaka, by no means excludes the subject of the Abhidhamma having been taught under the head of Dhamma. In the Mahakarunapundarika-sutra the doctrine of Buddha is divided into Dharma and Vinaya; the Abhidharma is not mentioned. But the same text knows of all the twelve Dharmapravakanani[1], the 1. Sutra; 2. Geya; 3. Vyakarana; 4. Gatha; 5. Udana; 6. Nidana; 7. Avadana; 8. Itivrittaka; 9. Gataka; 10. Vaipulya; 11. Adbhutadharma; 12. Upadesa; some of these being decidedly metaphysical.