linguistic:voice_change, structural:reformatting, structural:summarization, quality:correction, information:highlighting
Recitations

The First Council began when Ānanda was consulted to recite the discourses and to determine which were authentic and which were not. Mahākassapa asked of each discourse that Ānanda listed where, when, and to whom it was given, and at the end of this, the assembly agreed that Ānanda's memories and recitations were correct, after which the discourse collection (Pali: Sutta Piṭaka, Sanskrit: Sūtra Piṭaka) was considered finalized and closed. Ānanda therefore played a crucial role in this council, and texts claim he remembered 84,000 teaching topics, among which 82,000 taught by the Buddha and another 2,000 taught by disciples. Many early Buddhist discourses started with the words " Thus have I heard " (Pali: Evaṃ me sutaṃ, Sanskrit: Evaṃ mayā śrutam), which according to most Buddhist traditions, were Ānanda's words, indicating that he, as the person reporting the text (Sanskrit: saṃgītikāra), had first-hand experience and did not add anything to it. Thus, the discourses Ānanda remembered later became the collection of discourses of the Canon, and according to the Haimavāta, Dharmaguptaka and Sarvāstivāda textual traditions (and implicitly, post-canonical Pāli chronicles), the collection of Abhidhamma (Abhidhamma Piṭaka) as well. Scholar of religion Ronald Davidson notes, however, that this is not preceded by any account of Ānanda learning Abhidhamma. According to some later Mahāyāna accounts, Ānanda also assisted in reciting Mahāyāna texts, held in a different place in Rājagaha, but in the same time period. The Pāli commentaries state that after the council, when the tasks for recitation and memorizing the texts were divided, Ānanda and his pupils were given the task to remember the Dīgha Nikāya.