Dear Pali experts,
Recently I heard Bhante Sujato explain that the phrase evaṁ me sutaṁ was not spoken by Venerable Ānanda himself, but by the reciter of the sutta, since the texts were transmitted orally.
Does anyone have evidence or a source confirming that Bhante actually said this?
See his note at DN 1:1.1.1:
Tradition holds that these were the words spoken by Ānanda when reciting the Suttapiṭaka at the First Council following the Buddha’s death. In fact it is a tag signifying that the text has been passed down through oral tradition and the speaker was not present at the events (DN 5:21.10, MN 127:17.4).
We don’t have any contemporary third party accounts to prove otherwise either.
Which Bhante? Bhante Sujato or Bhante Ananda? I’m guessing the latter since you yourself just said “Recently I heard” lol 
Okay so I may have misunderstood the question? 
Your testimony is evidence enough for me! 
The Pāli word sutam (Sanskrit: śruta, from the root śru) does literally mean ‘heard’ but idiomatically as used in Pali and other coeval Middle-Indic and Sanskrit texts, it didn’t necessarily mean only ‘speech’ (so the idea that this is indicative of a putative oral tradition where each reciter prefixed their recitation of a sutta with “evam me sutam” to show that they were part of an oral tradition, is entirely a wrong conclusion).
The same word is used in Ashokan edicts to mean listening to his written edicts being read out (by a person who was literate, most common people and monks were illiterate at this point in history) - it doesnt mean that his written edicts were part of any oral tradition either.
The Pali canon belongs to the same period as the ashokan edicts, so the word sutam (in evam me sutam) would necessarily have to mean what it commonly meant in his time. Writing was known in this time, and written Buddhist texts were being read out to the king himself, and he states that his written edicts must be regularly “heard” (not “read”) by his audience:
iyaṃ ca lipi tisanakhatena sotaviyā - “This writing (edict) must be listened to (every month) on the day of the Tiṣya nakṣatra (Tiṣya constellation)”
aṃtalā pi ca tīsena khanasi khanasi ekena pi sotaviya
iyaṃ ca lipi anucātuṃmāsaṃ tisena nakhatena sotaviyā
kāmaṃ cu khaṇasi khanasi aṃtalā pi tisena ekena pi sotaviya
iyaṃ ca lipī anutisaṃ sotaviyā - This writing (edict) must be “heard” on the Tiṣya day of each month
alā pi khanena sotaviyā ekakena pi
iyaṃ ca lipī anucātuṃmāsaṃ sotaviyā tisena (P) aṃtalā pi ca sotaviyā
khane saṃtaṃ ekena pi sotaviyā
So the word ‘sutam’ (in ‘evam me sutam’) does not impute the existence of any oral tradition – in fact it shows that such a tradition did not exist, if there was already an oral tradition in Ashoka’s time, why would he ask the Buddhist monks to hear the pre-existing Suttas (when they as Buddhist monks would know and “hear” the suttas more than Ashoka himself), and why would he ask others to hear his own edicts?
What he was suggesting therefore by asking the sangha to “hear” specific suttas is - “I have heard these suttas being read out to me, and I like their message, so you too try to listen to them being read out to you so you too can see how good their contents are”. He would not be asking them to “hear” again what they themselves were already supposedly bearing in their memory and “orally” passing around from memory, as that sounds weird. Therefore the evidence is against the existence of any early oral transmission.
The reciter of the sutta is the literate monk, the one reading it out aloud from a preserved manuscript - not one reciting it from memory. Everything after the original narrator’s narration (which was narrated to the original scribe) was a written transmission (and further editing and standardization) in manuscripts without which word by word fidelity of transmission would have been inconceivable.
There is no Buddhist today or any time who knows a real Buddhist oral-transmission tradition, because everyone who repeats memorized texts has repetitively read aloud and memorized a written text and claims that it is oral tradition - while an oral transmission tradition is not that. An oral tradition is a tradition where there is no written text to memorize in the first place, or to check again whether you or anyone else have memorized it correctly or not. A true oral transmission for the Pali canon has never existed in Buddhism to my knowledge. Happy to be persuaded against though..
Thank you so much, Venerable. 
That is exactly what I was looking for.
You didn’t misunderstand my question. 
Your theory sounds good.
Not a Pali or sutta expert, after reading your theory, I would assume that Evaṁ me sutaṁ was spoken by the one who recited the sutta to whoever wrote it down the first time.
Hello! You can read this article, it is just on your topic.
For the Theravada canon as it exists today, I think you are right. At a certain point in history, we see Buddhists using written documents and memorization as ways to transmit texts. The descriptions of Chinese translation projects around the 4th and 5th centuries CE reference both recitation of large collections from memory (which were not always so successful) and use of written copies as source texts.
Another bit of historical evidence of the later introduction of written documents is that in the classical era, Buddhists began including copying written texts as a merit making exercise along with memorization, recitation, and explanation. Most EBTs don’t mention copying texts, but it’s common in later Mahayana works.
Finally, while it’s true that at some point the sectarian canons were codified and frozen in place, the parallels that exist make it clear that there was period when the wording and content of Buddhist scriptures varied a great deal from reciter to reciter, which is what we would expect from an oral tradition that allowed a certain amount of improvisation, and so forth. There is also a great deal of variations in EBT parallels that are caused by phonetic confusions rather than written typos. Studying parallels in Chinese is really necessary to see them fully because that’s where the earlier material is preserved. Looking at Sanskrit and Pali doesn’t illuminate what the situation was in earlier eras.
If you are referring to the colophons where they mention first day’s recitation, 2nd day’s recitation etc - corresponding to the Pali bhāṇavāra , those are not recitals from memory but reciting/reading aloud written texts. In any case a recital (even a recital from memory) is not ipso-facto a transmission, much less an oral-transmission. One would not begin to translate an oral text as translations are ipso facto attempts to recast written texts. The Chinese in several cases unmistakably reveals accumulated spelling mistakes that evidence layers of historical manuscript transmission in the substrate Indic language.
I don’t think it’s simple as that. There’s records of it in Jan Nattier’s explanations (I can find the sources later) that travelling Buddhist monks would come giving sermons, with a local translator, and a scribe writing the whole thing done.
I would be stressed to think this could apply to the large Agama collections (maybe?), but many parables (Jataka-like stories) and such para-canonical texts were transmitted that way.
These go beyond wholesale recitals, since the texts were frequently adapted to the Chinese speaking millieu. In that sense, I think it points to a vibrant, expressively creative culture of transmission (rather than mot-a-mot recitals of static texts, be they written or oral).
Though this of course sidetracks a bit to what you were replying to Charles. 
And I’m still having difficulty why wouldn’t you consider recitations as “transmissions” in any case.
A recitation from memory is not a transmission unless there is a pre-existing pedagogy of transmission. Such a pedagogy has evidently never existed to transmit texts orally from generation to generation in any era of Buddhism. When I talk of oral transmission, I am looking for pedagogical tools that are used in the process of such a transmission, which would guarantee the fidelity of the transmitted text across generations. People like Jan Nattier (and I have heard/watched some of her videos and read some of her published books) appear to have no clue about the mechanics of any historical oral transmission tradition, leave alone from the late-Vedic/early-Buddhist eras - the way they are describing it makes me think so. They are extrapolating Vedic oral transmission models to Early-Buddhism as if there was no difference. Everything that worked in the Vedic oral transmission would not work for EBTs - so how do they make such extrapolations? Where is there any evidence of the pedagogy of oral transmission in the history of early Buddhism? The fact that EBTs are in at least 3 different linguistic registers (Gandhari, Pali and Sanskrit) from the earliest stages shows that writing was definitely involved in the process of canonization of the suttas from the very origins - and the Chinese would have gotten the ideas that canonical texts could be recast into a different language (their own) by looking at their Indian originals in those different languages in India. Translation into Chinese would have been an order of magnitude more difficult (in fact entirely impossible) without a source text that was fixed in writing. Constantly the person explaining the meaning of the text would have had to make themselves clear that their explanation of the text was not part of the source text itself, it would have driven any Chinese scribe mad. So it is not as simple as saying “the Indians were good memorizers, people still memorize and repeat canonical texts in Sri Lanka and Burma”. Oral Transmission is an entirely different kettle of fish to memorizing and reciting a pre-existing written text and needs a very significant and pervasive pedagogical investment and scholarly apparatus the likes of which have never been seen in any sect of Early Buddhist history.
Thank you so much, @Markyon.
I somehow missed the notification of your response. Very interesting article. Will find time to digest it.
This implies a very late origin for the Nikaya texts, since you say that it is impossible for the earliest transmissions to have been done without writing. Barring the Harrapan epigraphs, there are no surviving epigraphs in India earlier than the Ashokan edicts that you cited above, but those date to the 2nd c. BCE, so you’re implying that the Nikaya texts originated no earlier than that. And since in your discussion of the Ashokan edicts above, you already said that commoners and monks were illiterate at that time, the only way they could have originated earlier than that would be as the creation of some secretly literate minority, or coming from outside of the subcontinent.
So the only way I can make sense of your arguments is to conclude that your opinion is that the Nikaya texts, oral or not, did not exist before the 2nd c. BCE *at the earliest*.
It’s also peculiar that no mention is made of writing or written transmission anywhere within those texts, although (if we follow the usual idea that the texts, oral or not, originated in the 4th c. at the very latest) they provide an otherwise consistent picture of the general level of social, cultural, and technological development at the time they were first transmitted. And that general level is definitely not of the 2nd century but much more like the 5th.
Ancient peoples often wrote stories about the remote past long after the events they were writing about, but as far as I know never have succeeded in doing so with such accuracy as your argument requires. If you know of counterexamples, I’d be very interested.
Is there something I’m missing that makes your argument make sense?
Do you have an example of such a tradition that exemplifies the traits you think are necessary i.e., a gold-standard for what you mean by an “oral transmission tradition?”
