akas_ or "_Three
Baskets_".

162. Q. _What are the names of the three Pitakas, or groups of books?_

A. The _Vinaya Pitaka_, the _Sutta Pitaka_ and the _Abhidhamma Pitaka_.

163. Q. _What do they respectively contain?_

A. The first contains all that pertains to morality and the rules of
discipline for the government of the Sangha, or Order; the second
contains instructive discourses on ethics applicable to all; the third
explains the psychological teachings of the Buddha, including the
twenty-four transcendental laws explanatory of the workings of Nature.

164. Q. _Do Buddhists relieve these books to be inspired, or
revealed, by a Divine Being?_

A. No; but they revere them as containing all the parts of that most
Excellent Law, by the knowing of which man may break through the
trammels of _Samsara_.

165. Q. _In the whole text of the three Pitakas how many words are
there?_

A. Dr. Rhys-Davids estimates them at 1,752,800.

166. Q. _When were the Pitakas first reduced to writing?_

A. In 88-76 B.C., under the Sinhalese King, Wattagamini, or three
hundred and thirty years after the Paranirvana of the Buddha.

167. Q. _Have we reason to believe that all the discourses of the
Buddha are known to us?_

A. Probably not, and it would be strange if they were. Within the
forty-five years of his public life he must have preached many hundreds
of discourses. Of these, in times of war and persecution, many must
have been lost, many scattered to distant countries, and many
mutilated. History says that enemies of the Buddha Dharma burnt piles
of our books as high as a coco-nut tree.

168. Q. _Do Buddhists consider the Buddha as one who by his own
virtue can save us from the consequence of our individual sins?_

A. Not at all. Man must emancipate himself. Until he does that he
will continue being born over and over and over again--the victim of
ignorance, the slave of unquenched passions.

169. Q. _What, then, was the Buddha to us, and all other beings?_

A. An all-seeing, all-wise Counsellor; one who discovered the safe
path and pointed it out; one who showed the cause of, and the only cure
for, human suffering. In pointing to the road, in showing us how to
escape dangers, he became our Guide. He is to us like one leading a
blind man across a narrow bridge over a swift and deep stream and so
saving his life.

170. Q. _If we were to try to represent the whole spirit of the
Buddh