If it is or isn’t , why ?
As a document, I don’t think it falls into even the most broad definition of “EBT”. The text has its own compiler who lived long after the Buddha. However the information in the texts (the stories, the explanation of the verses) might be from the time of the Buddha. But we just can’t know for sure.
1 Like
I have all 3 volumns of Eugene Watson Burlingame’s Buddhist Legends: Vol. I, II & III. a translation of the commentary. It is a somewhat mechanical attribution a a Jataka or Jataka type tale to each verse of the Dhamnapada.
Verses 183, 184 and 135 are in volumn #3!
To me the link of tale to verse is tenuous. But I am 2000 years in cultural assumptions away from sitting by the fire and hearing these.
But the Buddhavamsa and its commentary seem much more EBT to me.
Can you say a text is an EBT by virtue of it not being obviously something else?