Western Scholars' Oral Literature on Early Buddhism

Scholars generally believe that the beginning of the Buddhist scriptures existed in the form of Oral Literature, that is to say, the Buddhist scriptures were not written in the early days, but the Buddhist chanting by oral transmission. Therefore, the characteristics of oral literature became very important to understanding the history of early Buddhist sutras. The emergence of this kind of literature has a special and intricate background. In order to explore how it is formed, scholars usually speculate on a so-called "model" and use this model to explain its claims and justification arguments. This article is about three scholars in the Buddhist world in the western they put forward a big influence on the formation of oral literature. The first is believes that the classic literature (sutta literature, also known as nik?yas) has the nature of oral epic poetry, that is, it has a "strong improvisatory element" (strong improvisatory element). The second is Richard Gombrich, who opposed the Cousins model and proposed that the Buddhist scriptures are a "deliberate composition". After the Buddhist scriptures were integrated, they were recorded and systematically chanted to students. The third place is Mark Allon. The research theme of his research has shown that many styles play a role in helping to memorize scriptures and functioning in recitation. However, there are also some points worthy of further discussion between these three arguments and the supporting methods they adopt. Therefore, this article also attempts to make preliminary comments in the last section and explains that the thesis of oral literature can hardly be interpreted with a simplified model.