Unit 4 · What the Buddhist Texts Are

Theravada Buddhists in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos share one big set of scriptures. It is called the Tipitaka. The word means "three baskets." Tipitaka is the Pali form. The Sanskrit form is Tripitaka.

The Tipitaka is written in Pali. Pali is an old language from India. Few people speak it at home today. Monks learn it to read and chant the texts. English readers often call this collection the Pali Canon.

Buddhists believe the Tipitaka holds the Buddha’s teachings as his students remembered them. Scholars say it grew over several centuries. Both groups agree it is very old and very large. The English translation fills dozens of books.

The first basket is the Vinaya. It holds the rules for monks and nuns. The rules cover eating, clothing, sleeping and living together. They also explain how to settle arguments.

Each rule comes with a story. The Vinaya tells what happened, and then how the Buddha made a rule about it. For example, it tells of monks traveling in the rainy season. Farmers worried about their crops being stepped on. So monks were asked to stay in one place during the rains.

Theravada monks recite the main list of rules together twice a month. This list is called the Patimokkha. For fully ordained monks it has 227 rules. Nuns have a longer list.

The second basket is the Sutta basket. A sutta is a talk or teaching. The Sanskrit word is sutra. Most suttas show the Buddha or a student teaching someone. There are thousands of them.

The suttas are grouped into five collections called Nikayas. Some hold long talks. Some hold middle-length talks. One, the Khuddaka Nikaya, holds a mix of shorter books.

The third basket is the Abhidhamma. It sorts ideas about the mind into careful lists. It names kinds of thoughts and feelings. Theravada teachers value it highly. Many scholars think it was put together later than the suttas.

The Dhammapada sits in the Khuddaka Nikaya, the collection of shorter books. Its name means something like "path of the teaching." It has 423 short verses in 26 chapters.

Many Buddhists memorize its verses. They are short and easy to remember, like proverbs. Chapters have names like "The Mind," "Flowers" and "Anger." Readers often quote them.

The Dhammapada is one of the best-known Buddhist books in the world. It has been translated into many languages. One of the first English translations was by F. Max Muller in 1881.

The Khuddaka Nikaya also holds the Jatakas. These are stories Buddhists tell about the Buddha’s earlier lives. There are about 547 of them. The stories are often long.

In the Pali Canon itself, each Jataka is a set of verses. A later commentary tells the full story around the verses. Most people know the stories from that commentary.

The last ten Jatakas are long and famous. The very last is the story of Prince Vessantara, who gives away everything he has. Buddhists in Thailand and Laos still hear it told at festivals.

Many suttas begin the same way: "Thus have I heard." In Pali it is evam me sutam. Then the sutta names a place. It might say the Buddha was staying in a park near a city.

Buddhist tradition says the "I" is Ananda. He was the Buddha’s cousin and helper. He was known for his memory. Tradition says he recited the suttas after the Buddha died.

The opening tells listeners where a teaching came from. It says, in effect, "I did not make this up. I heard it." Mahayana sutras start the same way. It also marks the start.

Mahayana Buddhism is followed in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Tibet. Mahayana means "great vehicle." Mahayana Buddhists honor many early texts too. They also treasure many other sutras.

Famous ones include the Lotus Sutra, the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. Many were first written in Sanskrit. Many Sanskrit copies were later lost. They survive in Chinese and Tibetan translations.

Mahayana Buddhists believe these sutras teach the Buddha’s deepest message. Scholars date most of them from about the 1st century BCE onward. Theravada Buddhists do not include them in their canon.

Some religions have one main book. Buddhism is different. Buddhists have a large library of scriptures. Different traditions choose different parts. The library is very big.

A Theravada monk in Thailand reads the Pali Canon. A Zen teacher in Japan may chant the Heart Sutra. A Tibetan nun studies texts in the Kangyur. Each is reading Buddhist scripture.

Many families also have favorite texts. A Pure Land Buddhist may love a sutra about Amitabha Buddha. A Nichiren Buddhist chants the name of the Lotus Sutra. No one book holds it all.

Theravada Buddhism is strongest in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana Buddhism grew in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Vajrayana Buddhism is strongest in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia.

Each branch has its own favorite scriptures. Each has its own ways of practice. Buddhists in each branch see themselves as following the Buddha. None is ranked above the others here.

All three branches are found in Illinois today. Families from Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, Tibet and many other places have temples here. The Buddhist Temple of Chicago was founded in 1944.

Buddhist tradition says a meeting was held soon after the Buddha died. It is called the First Council. A council is a meeting to decide something important. Tradition places it at Rajagaha, in northern India.

The Vinaya tells the story. It says 500 monks attended. Upali recited the rules. Ananda recited the talks. The group agreed on what they heard. Then they chanted it together.

Scholars cannot check every detail of this story. Many think the texts grew and changed over time. Buddhists and scholars both agree the teachings were first passed on by voice, not writing.

Ananda was the Buddha’s cousin. For about 25 years he was the Buddha’s personal helper. He walked beside him and brought him water. He heard many talks.

Buddhists remember Ananda for his memory. Tradition says he could repeat a teaching after hearing it once. That is why the council asked him to recite.

Ananda is also remembered for his kindness. The Vinaya says he spoke up for women who wanted to become nuns. Many Buddhists honor him for that today. Nuns still tell this story.

After the council, groups of monks memorized different parts of the texts. They chanted them together, again and again. This is called oral tradition.

Chanting together helps catch mistakes. If one monk says a word wrong, the others notice. Repeated lists and phrases made the texts easier to remember.

Scholars say the suttas show signs of this. They repeat whole lines many times. They use numbered lists, like the Four Noble Truths. These help memory.

Buddhism reached Sri Lanka around the 3rd century BCE. Monks there kept chanting the texts. Then came hard times, with war and famine. Many monks died.

The Sri Lankan chronicles say monks worried the teachings might be lost. So they wrote them down. Tradition places this at Aluvihara in the 1st century BCE.

They wrote on palm leaves. Writers scratched letters into dried leaves with a metal pen. Then they rubbed in ink or soot to make the letters dark. The leaves were tied into bundles.

A palm-leaf book is long and thin. Each leaf has holes. A string runs through the holes. Wooden covers protect the pages. The covers are often painted or carved with care.

Palm leaves slowly wear out. Heat, bugs and damp harm them. So monks copied the texts onto new leaves every so often. Copying was careful, slow work. A copy could take months.

Many Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar still keep palm-leaf books. Some libraries study them today. Very old leaves are rare, because most wore out.

In 1900 a monk in Dunhuang, China, found a hidden cave room. It was full of old scrolls. One was a copy of the Diamond Sutra, a Mahayana text. The cave had been sealed for centuries.

It was printed with carved wooden blocks. At the end it gives a date that matches 868 CE. It says a man named Wang Jie had it made for his parents. It is the oldest dated printed book known.

Today it is kept at the British Library in London. The scroll is about 16 feet long. It shows how Buddhists in China used printing to share their texts.

Buddhism reached China by about the 1st century CE. Translators worked for centuries to turn texts into Chinese. One famous translator was Kumarajiva, around 400 CE.

Buddhism reached Tibet in the 7th and 8th centuries CE. Tibetan scholars made careful translations from Sanskrit. They made word lists so each term was translated the same way.

Some texts now survive only in Chinese or Tibetan. Without these translators, many sutras would be lost. Buddhists in East Asia and Tibet read them in their own languages.

In the 1800s, European scholars began to study Pali and Sanskrit. F. Max Muller translated the Dhammapada in 1881. T.W. Rhys Davids translated suttas that same year. He also founded the Pali Text Society in 1881.

In 1893 the World’s Parliament of Religions met in Chicago. Two Buddhist speakers came. Anagarika Dharmapala came from Sri Lanka. Soyen Shaku, a Zen teacher, came from Japan.

Today many translations exist. Buddhist monks, nuns and scholars all translate. Some translations are free online. Readers can compare them side by side.