In Buddhist literature the composite and tertiary character of the Sutta Pitaka is equally plain.  The various Nikayas are confessedly collections of discourses.  The two older ones seem dominated by the desire to bring before the reader the image of the Buddha preaching:  the Samyutta and Anguttara emphasize the doctrine rather than the teacher and arrange much the same matter under new headings.  But it is clear that in whatever form the various sermons, dialogues and dissertations appear, that form is not primary but presupposes compilers dealing with an oral tradition already stereotyped in language.  For long passages such as the tract on morality and the description of progress in the religious life occur in several discourses and the amount of matter common to different Suttas and Nikayas is surprising.  Thus nearly the whole of the long Sutta describing the Buddha’s last days and death[64], which at first sight seems to be a connected narrative somewhat different from other Suttas, is found scattered in other parts of the Canon.

Thus our oldest texts whether Brahmanic or Buddhist are editions and codifications, perhaps amplifications, of a considerably older oral teaching.  They cannot be treated as personal documents similar to the Koran or the Epistles of Paul.

The works of middle antiquity such as the Epics, Puranas, and Mahayanist sutras were also not produced by one author.  Many of them exist in more than one recension and they usually consist of a nucleus enveloped and sometimes itself affected by additions which may exceed the original matter in bulk.  The Mahabharata and Prajnaparamita are not books in the European sense:  we cannot give a date or a table of contents for the first edition[65]:  they each represent a body of literature whose composition extended over a long period.  As time goes on, history naturally grows clearer and literary personalities become more distinct, yet the later Puranas are not attributed to human authors and were susceptible of interpolation even in recent times.  Thus the story of Genesis has been incorporated in the Bhavishya Purana, apparently after Protestant missionaries had begun to preach in India.

The other point to which I would draw attention is the importance of relatively modern works, which supersede the older scriptures, especially in Hinduism.  This phenomenon is common in many countries, for only a few books such as the Bhagavad-gita, the Gospels and the sayings of Confucius have a portion of the eternal and universal sufficient to outlast the wear and tear of a thousand years.  Vedic literature is far from being discredited in India, though some Tantras say openly that it is useless.  It still has a place in ritual and is appealed to by reforming sects.  But to see Hinduism in proper perspective we must remember that from the time of the Buddha till now, the composition of religious literature in India has been almost uninterrupted and that almost