The Authenticity of the Anupada Sutta
Mrs. C. A. F. Rhys Davids, in the preface to her translation of the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, throws doubt on the authenticity of the Anupada Sutta (MN No. 111) as a genuine discourse of the Buddha’s: “The sutta, as are so many, is an obvious patchwork of editorial compiling, and dates, without reasonable doubt, long after Sāriputta has preceded his Master in leaving this world. We have first a stock formula of praise spoken not once only of Sāriputta. Then, ex abrupto, this tradition of his fortnight of systematic introspection. Then, ex abrupto, three more formulas of praise. And that is all. The sutta, albeit put into the mouth of the Founder, is in no way a genuine discourse.”74
So Mrs. Rhys Davids. We do not agree at all. There is certainly no reason why we should doubt that the Master in fact remembered with words of praise his great disciple. On the contrary, it would have been strange if he had not done so. Instead of sharing Mrs. Rhys Davids’ impression that the parts of the discourse succeed each other abruptly it seems to us quite natural that, between the words of praise at the beginning and the end, there should be embedded an illustration to this eulogy of Sāriputta’s wisdom, namely, the account of his period of analytical introspection, as an example of his penetrating wisdom. The use of set formulas is by no means peculiar to the Anupada Sutta but can be met with throughout the Sutta Piṭaka. It can scarcely be maintained that all the numerous texts in which stock passages occur are “compilations” and that these passages themselves are consequently insertions.
Even if the Anupada Sutta were a compilation, this would not exclude the possibility that the single parts composing it were the authentic words of the Buddha. “But,” Mrs. Rhys Davids says, “the intrusion of two words—of anupada, and of vavatthita, ‘determined’—which are not of the older idiom, suggest a later editing.” Though anupada does not occur frequently in the Piṭakas, it is also not at all an expression characteristic of any later period of Pāli literature; so we cannot draw any conclusions from the mere fact of its rare occurrence. With regard to the other word, it is true that derivatives of the verb vavattheti, vavatthita, and particularly vavatthāna, are found very frequently in later canonical books such as the Paṭisambhidāmagga and the Vibhaṅga, and especially in the commentaries and the Visuddhimagga. But vavatthita, “determined” or “established,” is likewise not such a highly technical term that the dating of a text could be based on that evidence alone. There are many other words too which occur only once or sporadically in the Sutta Piṭaka. Even if one of these words, for example vavattheti, became the fashion in later idiom in preference to its synonyms, such a development (very frequent in the history of words) does not exclude the occasional use of the same word in an earlier period too.
Mrs. Rhys Davids writes further: “Buddhaghosa either did not know the Anupada Sutta or forgot to quote it. Yet to quote it, is precisely what he would have done just here, when he was writing the Atthasālinī on the Dhammasaṅgaṇī. And his canonical erudition was remarkable. How did he come to overlook the sutta?” He did not overlook it. But Mrs. Rhys Davids has overlooked the fact that Buddhaghosa’s commentary to the Majjhima Nikāya deals, of course, also with the Anupada Sutta. Besides, at Asl 208, Buddhaghosa makes a quite unmistakable allusion to that sutta by mentioning the most characteristic term occurring in it, anupadadhamma-vipassanā (see p. 49), an expression that does not, to our knowledge, appear anywhere else in the Piṭakas. It need not surprise us that Buddhaghosa did not quote the incomplete List of Dhammas as given in that sutta. In commenting on the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, he was not concerned with historical research, and besides, he did not need to prove what was quite evident at his time: that the Abhidhamma has deep, widespread roots in the suttas. Only today has it become necessary to emphasize the latter fact against such hypercriticism as that of Mrs. Rhys Davids, who goes even so far as to say (p. xii) that the “Abhidhamma… is not the message of the Founder; it is the work of the monkish world that grew up after him.” It is to be regretted that such a gifted scholar as Mrs. Rhys Davids marred the value of her later works by hasty and prejudiced judgments.
In conclusion, we repeat that we do not see any reason why the Anupada Sutta should not be regarded as an authentic discourse of the Buddha. We therefore feel fully justified in quoting that discourse as a sutta source for Abhidhamma terminology.