Talk:Sixth Buddhist council

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This section was taken from the exerpt at the beginning of the Sixth Great Buddhist Council. Approved by all the venerable monks from the entire world. What is more authentic than this?

This section could be integratedinto the prsent article. it come from the main oon buddhist councils, but is too big

The Sixth Council was called at Kaba Aye in Yangon, formerly Rangoon in 1954, eighty-three years after the fifth one was held in Mandalay. It was sponsored by the Burmese Government led by the then Prime Minister, the Honourable U Nu. He authorized the construction of the Maha Passana Guha, 'the great cave', an artificial cave very like India's Sattapanni Cave where the first Buddhist Council had been held. Upon its completion The Council met on the 17th of May, 1954. As in the case of the preceding councils, its first objective was to affirm and preserve the genuine Dhamma and Vinaya. However it was unique in so far as the monks who took part in it came from eight countries. These two thousand five hundred learned Theravada monks came from Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand. The late Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw was appointed the noble task of asking the required questions about the Dhamma of the Venerable Bhadanta Vicittasarabhivamsa who answered all of them learnedly and satisfactorily. By the time this council met all the participating countries had had the Pali Tipitaka rendered into their native scripts, with the exception of India.

The traditional recitation of the Buddhist Scriptures took two years and the Tripitaka and its allied literature in all the scripts were painstakingly examined and their differences noted down and the necessary corrections made and all the versions were then collated. Happily, it was found that there was not much difference in the content of any of the texts. Finally, after the Council had officially approved them, all of the books of the Tipitaka and their Commentaries were prepared for printing on modern presses and published in the Myanmar (Burmese) script. This notable achievement was made possible through the dedicated efforts of the two thousand five hundred monks and numerous lay people. Their work came to an end in May, 1956, two and a half millennia after the Lord Buddha's Parinibbana. This council's work was the unique achievement of representatives from the entire Buddhist world. The version of the Tipitaka which it undertook to produce has been recognized as being true to the pristine teachings of the Buddha Gotama and the most authoritative rendering of them to date.

[edit] Doubts on the 6th Buddhist Council's Tipitaka

Since the year 2000, the authenticity of the currently published version of Tipitaka of the Sixth Budhist Council has been in some doubt, as some findings from the Dhamma Society Fund in Thailand have become more well known. The Dhamma Society Fund claims it has proof that after the first printing of the Tipitaka of Sixth Buddhist Council in 1958, it had been secretly replaced with the previous Burmese Fifth Buddhist Council Tipitaka. The Dhamma Society Fund found the inconsistencies by comparing some rare orginal Burmese versions of the 1957 and the 1958 Sixth Council editions with Burmese Fifth Council editions from before 1956, and all later (and current) Sixth Buddhist Council editions. It found that the current Sixth Council Edition is identical to the Bumese Fifth Council Edition. The motivation for this secret replacement would be that the other countries (Thailand, Sri Lanka) were not printing the Sixth Buddhist Council's Tipitaka, and were still publishing the old national editions also. Because of this Burma also went back to printing their old Tipitaka, but with the cover of the Sixth Buddhist Council's edition. The Dhamma Society Fund is currently printing the 'real' Sixth Buddhist Council Tiptaka with sponsorship from the Thai King and other Thai royalty, for distribution amongst the most prestigious libraries and institutes around the world. After this, they plan to publish the Sixth Buddhist Counil Tipitaka for free, via the internet.