On the historical stratification of buddhist doctrine on the evidence of the early buddhist texts

[josephzizys]

@Vaddha

The aggregates are more attested to in the pre-sectarian canon than the various permutations and formulations at DN 1.

This is categotrically untrue.
It is even categorically untrue of the pali canon, let alone my imaginary “ideal” canon of overlapping pali and chinese.

For a mostly Pali centric analysis of exactly how often and in which books aggregates material actually occurs, see:

Are khandhas early or late EBT?

In recent discussions the opinion came up that the khandhas, because they hardly appear in the DN, would be a late dhamma category. I haven’t heard this understanding before and I just assumed that the khandhas are one of the most basic EBT categories. In more detail the khandhas appear 4x in the DN: DN 14, DN 22, and not surprisingly in DN 33, DN 34 17x in the AN, which is a very low number 20x in the MN, a decent amount many times in the SN obviously, mostly in SN 22-24: —5x in SN 1-11, —7x…

This is not the whole story of course, for that a genuine and robust analysis of jhana/sekkha and anatta/aggregates would need to be placed side by side, which is what I intend to do in the OP

@Vaddha

Relatively short, concise, yet practical contemplative analyses and instructions. When we start comparing much of the material in the various sects’ canons, we see that there is an underground rail-road between S and M: longer discourses that are copied and or moved and often expanded upon (but not always!) are moved from S into M.

This is true of the Pali, and the evidence from the Chinese is yet another example of why its probable that the original M lacked many of the S style discourses originally.