[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mAd_ScIeNtIsT: *
Actually, PA is right.
Bukhari collected a total of around 600,000 hadiths. Out of these, he only verified 7,000 and rejected about 593,000 which he believed were false and not genuine.
Other hadith scholars such as Muslim and Tarmizi accepted even less than the 7,000. There were hadiths accepted by Bukhari but rejected by other scholars who also studied them, and vice versa.
[/QUOTE]
Like i said, nonsense!
Ask a layperson what he understands by the term "hadith" and he'll probably say it refers to a "saying" of the Prophet (saw). But this is only half of what a scholar of hadith understands by this term. To a hadith scholar - and in fact to any beginning student of hadith - the term "hadith" signifies not just the "wording" (or "saying" or "text") that has been conveyed but also the chain of transmission (isnad) through which the text has come down to us. The text AND the isnad together form a "hadith" and one without the other is useless. Now in the eyes of a hadith scholar the very same text/wording reported through five different chains of transmission doesn't equate to one hadith but rather five hadith. The same one single saying of the Prophet (saw) having a hundred chains of transmission isn't one hadith; it is one hundred hadith (even though we are dealing with just the one statement). Every variation in the isnad is counted as a new hadith.
So when we say Bukhari chose only 7000 (or whatever) reports out of some 600,000 (or whatever) it more accurately means that in fact he chose 7000 chains of transmission out of the 600,000 that were known to him. This has little or nothing to do with him declaring hadith "false and not genuine". As an example: Some hadith in Sahih al Bukhari are known to have upwards of seventy chains of transmission (that's seventy hadith in Bukhari's eyes), now if Bukhari chose to record just one of those chains because it sufficed to show that the hadith as a whole met his criteria for authenticity it would be foolish for someone to then conclude that out of seventy hadith Bukhari only verified one as authentic and rejected sixty-nine of them as "false and not genuine". Only an ignoramus would say this.
Let me simplify this a little more if i can. The famous hadith, "Whoever lies against me intentionally..." (it's in Sahih al Bukhari) is reported by various Companions and recorded through over one hundred and fifty chains of transmission. Now someone who has memorised the wording of this narration along with all its different chains of transmission is said to know or have memorised one hundred and fifty hadith (yet there's just the one piece of text: "Whoever lies against me intentionally..."). If he records this text in a book with just one of the chains of transmission can someone rightly say, "Hold on, out of the one hundred and fifty hadith that he knew only one turned out to be authentic and the rest he has rejected as false"? Certainly not! He didn't understand what was meant by that person knowing one hundred and fifty hadith.
Furthermore, where did Bukhari (or Muslim for that matter) ever claim that in compiling their respective Sahih collections they intended to include all of the authentic hadith known to them? They intended nothing of the sort. Bukhari: "I have left out many other authentic traditions than this so as to avoid unnecessary length." (Tarikh Baghdad 2:8-9). And Muslim: "I have not included in this [book] every hadith which I deem authentic." (Sahih Muslim, 801). If they omitted certain hadith it doesn't at all mean that those hadith are "false and not genuine" in their view. One need only refer to their other works to find them recording hadith they deemed authentic but which they didn't include in either Sahih al Bukhari or Sahih Muslim.
As every hadith scholar and student knows, the sahih class of hadith are split into two categories: sahih li zatihi (independently authentic) and sahih li ghayrihi (valid due to supporting hadith). Bukhari (and Muslim) opted to compile only sahih li zatihi hadith. This doesn't mean they rejected as "false and not genuine" the countless number of hadith validated as sahih li ghayrihi.
The hadith scholar, al Hakim, set himself the task of compiling authentic hadith that met the criteria of either Bukhari or Muslim but which they themselves didn't include in their respective works. His work al Mustadrak ala Sahihain is published (five volumes if i recall). Although he failed to meet their standards with a number of the hadith that he recorded it does at least show that there exist authentic hadith outside of those already verified by Bukhari and Muslim. Other collections of sahih hadith also confirm this, such as Sahih ibn Hibban, Sahih ibn Khuzaimah etc.
Of course, Bukhari did declare certain hadith false and spurious. But to say that he rejected 593,000 out of 600,000 as false is grossly inaccurate and misleading in view of the above. As is the claim that all hadith compilers rejected more hadiths than they declared authentic.
