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1 " The Pāli canon that the Buddhist tradition of Ceylon and South East Asia presents us with appears to be basically the Tipiṭaka that the compilers of the commentaries had before them in the fifth and sixth centuries CE. The Pāli tradition itself records that the texts of the canon at first existed only orally and were committed to writing at a relatively late date, some time during the first century BCE. On the basis of this tradition – and scholars have generally looked upon it quite favourably – we may be justified in concluding that the Pāli canon as we have it is substantially as it was written down at that time. Presumably this canon was brought to Ceylon from India at some earlier date, possibly by Mahinda, who, according to the Pāli tradition, came to Ceylon some time during the reign of Asoka. This tradition may have a kind of corroboration in the form of Asoka's thirteenth rock edict. Certainly the language of the canon appears to be entirely consonant with a north Indian provenance, and any evidence for significant additions to the canon after its arrival in Ceylon is at best inconclusive. "
― , The Buddhist Path to Awakening
2 " What is clear, however, is that we cannot assume that the earliest forms of Buddhist thought must necessarily exhibit the traits of simplicity and lack of sophistication; the earliest portions of the Nikāyas or Āgamas may already represent a quite developed synthesis of the early Indian yogic tradition. "
3 " Some of my colleagues are finding inconsistencies in the canonical texts which they assert to be such without telling us how the Buddhist tradition itself regards the texts as consistent-as if that were not important. My own view is not, I repeat, that we have to accept the Buddhist tradition uncritically, but that if it interprets texts as coherent, that interpretation deserves the most serious consideration (quoting Richard Gombrich). "
