of evidence is forthcoming, but the Sanskrit fragments of the Samyuktagama found near Turfan contain parts of six sutras which are arranged in the same order as in the Chinese translation and are apparently the original from which it was made.  It is noticeable that three of the four great Agamas were translated by monks who came from Tukhara or Kabul.  Gunabhadra, however, the translator of the Samyuktagama, came from Central India and the text which he translated was brought from Ceylon by Fa-Hsien.  It apparently belonged to the Abhayagiri monastery and not to the Mahavihara.  Nanjio,[773] however, states that about half of it is repeated in the Chinese versions of the Madhyama and Ekottara Agamas.  It is also certain that though the Chinese Agamas and Pali Nikayas contain much common matter, it is differently distributed.[774]

There was in India a copious collection of sutras, existing primarily as oral tradition and varying in diction and arrangement, but codified from time to time in a written form.  One of such codifications is represented by the Pali Canon, at least one other by the Sanskrit text which was rendered into Chinese.  With rare exceptions the Chinese translations were from the Sanskrit.[775] The Sanskrit codification of the sutra literature, while differing from the Pali in language and arrangement, is identical in doctrine and almost identical in substance.  It is clearly the product of the same or similar schools, but is it earlier or later than the Pali or contemporary with it?  The Chinese translations merely fix the latest possible date.  A portion of the Samyuktagama (Nanjio, No. 547) was translated by an unknown author between 220 and 280.  This is probably an extract from the complete work which was translated about 440, but it would be difficult to prove that the Indian original was not augmented or rearranged between these dates.  The earliest translation of a complete Agama is that of the Ekottaragama, 384 A.D.  But the evidence of inscriptions[776] shows that works known as Nikayas existed in the third century B.C.  The Sanskrit of the Agamas, so far as it is known from the fragments found in Central Asia, does not suggest that they belong to this epoch, but is compatible with the theory that they date from the time of Kanishka of which if we know little, we can at least say that it produced much Buddhist Sanskrit literature.  M. Sylvain Levi has suggested that the later appearance of the complete Vinaya in Chinese is due to the late compilation of the Sanskrit original.[777] It seems to me that other explanations are possible.  The early translators were clearly shy of extensive works and until there was a considerable body of Chinese monks, to what public would these theological libraries appeal?  Still, if any indication were forthcoming from India or Central Asia that the Sanskrit Agamas were arranged or rearranged in the early centuries of our era, the late date of the Chinese translations would certainly support it.  But I am inclined to think that the Nikayas were rewritten in Sanskrit about the beginning of our era, when it was felt that works claiming a certain position ought to be composed in what had become the general literary language of India.[778] Perhaps those who wrote them in Sanskrit were hardly conscious of making a translation in our sense, but simply wished to publish them in the best literary form.