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Buddhists have preserved most of the Tripitaka for 2500 years, and for the first 500 years it was memorized and transmitted orally from generation to generation. Buddhist monks today spend significant amounts of their time memorizing parts of it. Printed, it's about 12000 pages; it's been translated into many languages, but not all of it has been translated into English yet. Thanissaro Bhikkhu has been working on it for 20 years, publishing his translations under CC-BY, and may finish the job before he dies. Aside from its value to devotees, the Tripitaka is one of our best historical sources about everyday life in South Asia 2500 years ago.

The invention of wood block printing 1300 years ago in the Tang was apparently specifically motivated by the desire to preserve and reproduce Buddhist sutras; the oldest surviving documents printed with movable type, from 900 years ago, are also Buddhist texts.

Of course the Tripitaka is not permanent; it will be lost some day. But you seem to be implicitly claiming that Buddhists do not apply effort to preserving information and in particular textual records, because they know that ultimately they will be lost. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite, and believing your implicit claim would require almost complete ignorance of Buddhism, printing technology, and South Asian classical studies.



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