For our knowledge of Buddhism, therefore, we have for centuries only oral traditions to rely upon. Of these traditions only a portion may be traced approximately to the times of Buddha, and of the fragments which can possibly be traced not one contains a narrative nor any historical reference to passing events. On the contrary, our knowledge of the origin of Christianity is derived not from fragments of oral tradition, but from a set of canonical writings, many of them traceable close to the generation that witnessed Christ’s death, in which the story of His ministry is set in historical relation to the age in which He appeared, and His peculiar doctrines are so fixed that any addition to them is at once recognised as spurious. Between the extremes of criticism as to the period covered by the life of Christ there is a difference of only half a dozen years; but there is a difference in Buddhist traditions of more than a thousand years as to the date of Buddha’s birth, and even European scholars, after carefully sifting traditions and writings, have only been able approximately to fix dates for his death ranging over a period of 175 years.[73] For historical accuracy, therefore, the traditions are as worthless as they are for any photographic presentation of the various persons who figure in them. In truth we have in them neither chronology nor biography. Events and actors are equally indistinct; we have only a background without any perspective, and pasteboard puppets projected against it which might be designated by any name whatever. Even in respect of transmission of doctrine, oral tradition was found very early to have failed. The reason given in their chronicles for resorting to writing is confession sufficient that they considered that method of preserving the deposit of the faith a safer one.[74] So divergent had the renderings and so corrupt had the texts become—“for even the monks of the great council were blamed for turning the religion upside down, for distorting the sense and teaching of the five Nikayas, for casting aside that Sutta and Vinaya, and making imitations of them changing this to that[75]—that the profoundly wise priests, foreseeing the perdition of the people (from the perversion of the doctrines), and in order that the religion might endure for ages, wrote the same in books.”[76] Before this time the many schisms which had arisen were powerful illustrations of the evils which the “profoundly wise” transcribers deplored, and of that falling away from the original creed which this religion had already suffered for lack of a secured basis of faith.[77]