Are you kidding me?

 

So the Pali Canon was written down 500 years after the Buddha´s death, in another country, in a language the Buddha never spoke, and which may not even have existed during his lifetime? And the oldest preserved manuscripts are 500 years younger still? 

So how do we *know* that it reflects the Buddha´s original teachings? Or even the original manuscripts? Maybe Buddhism (or at least Theravada Buddhism) wasn´t invented by the Buddha, but rather by Buddhagosa...