Stick Man
As I'm pretty ignorant of buddhist culture, can someone tell me how reliable are buddhist texts supposed to be as historical documents reliably quoting the man himself ?
That is, did he really say those things ?
Do we have all the sayings that are relevant or, as in the bible and with Greek philosophers we only have fragments, re-writes and interpretations ?
Buddha's attendant, Ananda, had near perfect recall.
The biggest issue in my opinion is that we don't have the teachings in the original language they were spoken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnandaĀnanda (Pali and Sanskrit: आनन्द; 5th–4th century BCE) was the primary attendant of the Buddha and one of his ten principal disciples. Among the Buddha's many disciples, Ānanda stood out for having the best memory. Most of the texts of the early Buddhist Sutta-Piṭaka (Pali: सुत्त पिटक; Sanskrit: सूत्र-पिटक, Sūtra-Piṭaka) are attributed to his recollection of the Buddha's teachings during the First Buddhist Council. For that reason, he is known as the Treasurer of the Dhamma, with Dhamma (Sanskrit: धर्म, dharma) referring to the Buddha's teaching.
In a narrower sense, sati or mindfulness is the ability to remember. Ananda had this ability to a phenomenal degree. He could immediately remember everything, even if he had heard it only once. He could repeat discourses of the Buddha flawlessly up to 60,000 words, without leaving out a single syllable. He was able to recite 15,000 four-line stanzas of the Buddha. It may sound like a miracle to us to be able to accomplish such a feat. But the miracle is solely that we encumber our minds with a hundred-thousand useless things, which hinder us from becoming master over our memory. The Buddha said once that the only reason why one forgets anything is the presence of one of the five hindrances[25] (AN 5.193). Because Ananda was one in the higher training, he was able to let go of these hindrances at will (if any were still present in him at all) and so could concentrate completely on what he heard.[26]
Early Buddhist texts (EBTs), early Buddhist literature or early Buddhist discourses are parallel texts shared by the early Buddhist schools. The most widely studied EBT material are the first four Pali Nikayas, as well as the corresponding Chinese Āgamas.[1][2][3][4] However, some scholars have also pointed out that some Vinaya material, like the Patimokkhas of the different Buddhist schools, as well as some material from the earliest Abhidharma texts could also be quite early.[5][6]
Besides the large collections in Pali and Chinese, there are also fragmentary collections of EBT materials in Sanskrit, Khotanese, Tibetan and Gāndhārī. The modern study of early pre-sectarian Buddhism often relies on comparative scholarship using these various early Buddhist sources.[7]
