Editing Four Noble Truths (section)

====Growing importance====
Buddhologist Eviatar Shulman proposes that in its original form the Four Truths were rooted in meditative perception of mental events, building on his analysis of the Pāli term ayam which is equivalent, he claims, to an immediate perception, such as this here right now in front of me.<ref>Shulman, Eviatar Rethinking the Buddha (Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 140 ff.</ref>

According to Bronkhorst, the four truths may already have been formulated in earliest Buddhism, but did not have the central place they acquired in later buddhism.{{sfn|Bronkhorst|1993|p=107}} According to Anderson, only by the time of the commentaries, in the fifth century CE, did the four truths come to be identified in the Theravada tradition as the central teaching of the Buddha.{{sfn|Anderson|1999|pp=55–56}}{{refn|group=note|Anderson: "However, the four noble truths do not always appear in stories of the Buddha's enlightenment where we might expect to find them. This feature may indicate that the four noble truths emerged into the canonical tradition at a particular point and slowly became recognized as the first teaching of the Buddha. Speculations about early and late teachings must be made relative to other passages in the Pali canon because of a lack of supporting extratextual evidence. Nonetheless, it is still possible to suggest a certain historical development of the four noble truths within the Pali canon. What we will find is a doctrine that came to be identified as the central teaching of the Buddha by the time of the commentaries in the fifth century C.E."{{sfn|Anderson|1999|pp=55–56}}}} According to Anderson,

{{Blockquote|... the four noble truths were probably not part of the earliest strata of what came to be recognized as Buddhism, but that they emerged as a central teaching in a slightly later period that still preceded the final redactions of the various Buddhist canons.{{sfn|Anderson|1999|p=21}}}}

According to Feer and Anderson, the four truths probably entered the Sutta Pitaka from the Vinaya, the rules for monastic order.{{sfn|Anderson|1999|pp=74, 77}}{{refn|group=note|Anderson refers to Léon Feer, who already in 1870 "suggested the possibility that the four noble truths emerged into Buddhist literature through ''vinaya'' collections."{{sfn|Anderson|2001|p=183}} She also refers to Bareau, who noticed the consistency between the two versions in the ''Mahavagga'', part of the ''Vinaya'', and the ''Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta'' of the Buddha's enlightenment: "As Bareau noted, the consistency between these two versions of the Buddha's enlightenment is an indication that the redactors of the Theravada canon probably brought the two accounts into agreement with each other at a relatively late point in the formation of the canon.<br />Leon Feer had already suggested in 1870 that the versions of the four noble truths found in the sutras and suttas were derived from the vinaya rescensions in the larger body of Buddhist literature; Bareau's conclusion builds on this claim."{{sfn|Anderson|1999|p=74}}}} They were first added to enlightenment-stories which contain the Four Jhanas, replacing terms for "liberating insight".{{sfn|Anderson|1999|p=148}}{{refn|group=note|According to Schmithausen, in his often-cited article ''On some Aspects of Descriptions or Theories of 'Liberating Insight' and 'Enlightenment' in Early Buddhism'', the mention of the four noble truths as constituting "liberating insight", which is attained after mastering the Rupa Jhanas, is a later addition to texts such as Majjhima Nikaya 36.{{sfn|Schmithausen|1981}}{{sfn|Bronkhorst|1993|p={{page needed|date=November 2020}}}}{{sfn|Vetter|1988}}}} From there they were added to the biographical stories of the Buddha.{{sfn|Anderson|1999|p=17}}{{refn|group=note|Anderson refers to research by K.R. Norman, Bareau, Skilling, Schmithausen and Bronkhorst.{{sfn|Anderson|1999|pp=19–20}}}}