Later texts

[Outsoba]

Hi,
How do we know that the buddhavamsa und Cariyapitaka are later texts and do not belong to the EBTs?

[sentinel]

Hi,
How do we know that the buddhavamsa und Cariyapitaka are later texts and do not belong to the EBTs?

Hello ,

Early text does not necessarily mean Original or Authentic .

[JamesTheGiant]

One simple way is to see if they are found in both the Chinese texts and the Pali texts.
Because the suttas were taken north to China and translated to Chinese before the 4th century CE, if the teaching is found in both the Pali texts and Chinese agamas, then it is earlier than 4th century.
If the teaching isn't in the Pali but is in the Chinese, then it's a later text.
There are plenty of other ways to do it, such as linguistic analysis = some words are more modern, etc. Some stock phrases were created later, so can mark a sutra.
But these methods can't really tell us which the Buddha actually taught. That's too long ago.

I think this roughly how they find out, please forgive if I've misunderstood.

[Outsoba]

Interesting, thank you both for your replies.

[budo]

Ashokas pillars and edicts also give clues about nikayas and books

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/aut ... asoka.html