How much confidence can be placed in the authenticity of the Buddhist texts? The oral transmission of Buddhist texts may well have been strength rather than a weakness. When texts are preserved by groups of monastics chanting them together at regular intervals, the likelihood of errors of omission or deliberate amendments is minimized. While it must be acknowledged that there can be no unshakeable evidence for the authenticity of the Buddhist texts, there are nonetheless a number of good reasons to place confidence in them. Firstly, as explained earlier there is an inner coherence and lack of contradiction in the […]