the tradition is safe because key 'texts' (to use a functional neologism) were saved by collectors

It could well be argued that The Tradition is an illusion created by the very selective methodology employed by the collectors with respect to their agenda which set out to establish such a notion in the first place. Thus - anything that didn't fit that agenda was ignored; and anything that did was treated as an imperfect manifestation of a greater ideal and modified to fit.