Hi @srkris 
It’s a literary trope; there are plenty in Buddhist texts which are quite obvious.
I think for now we’ll just have to set this aspect aside and agree to disagree. I think we are talking past one another to a certain extent.
Correct. This is common knowledge in modern Buddhist Studies. Much of the Abhidhamma and Vinaya were likely after his time. There was probably one sutta pitaka equivalent-like body of texts, and perhaps some form of pātimokkha. So it’s a straw-man. What you really want to argue is that the majority of prose suttas are not authentic. So I’ll respond to that aspect.
In terms of this argument, I do think that Ven. @sujato may not have the strongest argument. We could plausibly read the text, to my mind, as saying not that these two unknown brahmins wanted to change the text to verse themselves. But rather that they are requesting of the Buddha that the community switch to versified Vedic. Assuming they are referring to a reasonable body of text which could be versified. Assuming that. Then it is a plausible interpretation. Especially because it is probably more of a literary device, as people tend to use this passage today. “The Buddha wanted his teachings preserved in vernacular language, not rarified verse.” It doesn’t really matter so much IMHO if the request is actually practical in real life. It’s more the fact that they asked if the Buddha would approve this and he said no that matters.
But I still think that it is a good point that assuming the corpus was something closer to the suttas we have in the various Buddhist traditions, it would be a quite implausible suggestion, or it seems as much. You are basically speculating that, despite the historical indications and analyses of these texts, history was something different than has been agreed upon by scholars and the traditions. And therefore the passage must be interpreted according to your intuition about history. Which I don’t find particularly convincing, though it doesn’t mean it is by necessity incorrect.
Yes, this is true. Based on your reply there are a few things I’d like to mention.
I agree with you that that would be quite difficult. But I don’t think suttas are verbatim records of events that happened and words spoken. I think they were compiled by monastics based on what the Buddha said and events believed to have transpired. Often, I think they are often summaries or “notes” of a sort of the main message.
There are a series of tools they used to do this. Stock formulas which repeat and say the same message with verbatim or near-verbatim words. Repeat structures which fill-in new ideas or loop back old ones, like repeating conversations verbatim before giving a response. This reenforces the text to be memorized within the discourse. There is also the use of repetitive synonyms, to preserve the general meaning and not to give subtle nuances with different words. If one word is lost, changed, or misunderstood, the general message gets across. Waxing syllables. Lists of words and ideas increase in the number of syllables per word. This provides a rhythm and standard to text to preserve the proper order of terms and ease memorizing arbitrary order of similar words. Common stock settings, characters, textual tropes for quotations, similes, q&a, etc.
There are also many numerical principles. Repetition of important things three times. Numerical lists. Fractal lists with regular numerical pattern. Numerical symbology and ordering.
Then there is of course the verse. Verse has metre and rules which govern it. There are also often verse summaries of prose passages which help retain content and meaning. There are strings and series of verses across texts linked together by common words, phrases, or ideas in each verse. Much of this is not obvious unless analyzing the progression of, e.g. the Udāna discourses based off their verses.
Moreover, some scholars have argued that it’s likely the Buddha himself helped formulate and teach in some of these stock passages or formulas. There are discourses where the Buddha himself is overheard repeating or reciting Dhamma formulas, such as the formula for the arising of contact and craving, which is taught dozens of times. It would have been understood that the audience wanted to memorize the teaching, so it could be presented and packaged over time in the community to be more conducive to that end.
The discourses themselves also talk about memorizing the Dhamma, reciting the Dhamma, hearing the Dhamma. There are Patimokkha rules about having people recite / repeat passages for memorization from a teacher. They never mention writing it, or reading it, or writing anything. But reciting out loud, in a group, alone, mentally, being very learned via hearing Dhamma, or monks repeating Dhamma summaries they memorized to others — these are things we see discussed internally.
So just to reiterate: they didn’t hear it once, and they didn’t try to transmit it exactly as it was spoken. They would have condensed and repeated and formulated and recited it together. Many themes taught probably used certain stock formulas that could be elaborated or commented on.
I’ll also reiterate that this has actually been studied comparatively. In order to explain why texts change the way they do across time and space, and the type of change that occurs is part of it. If it were simply a matter of writing, it would not have sufficient explanatory power. It’s precisely the fact that this was an oral tradition by people who understood the texts that is part of explaining the evolution and structure of the texts. It’s for this reason that the texts vary and evolve the way they did, and it’s for this reason that they are redacted in a unique way different than say the Vedas. The process of composition, transmission and recitation was different.
Just because it is different from the tradition you are familiar with doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I’m not saying what you say has no merit, nor am I defending that every single discourse goes back to a historical event of some sort. But there is lots of nuance here.
