Unit 9 · Genres of the Pali Canon

The Sutta Pitaka, or basket of discourses, holds talks attributed to the Buddha and his leading students. Theravada Buddhists sort them into five collections, each called a Nikaya.

The Digha Nikaya holds 34 long talks. The Majjhima Nikaya holds 152 middle-length talks. The Samyutta Nikaya groups thousands of short talks by topic. The Anguttara Nikaya arranges talks by number, from ones to elevens.

The fifth, the Khuddaka Nikaya, or minor collection, is a mix of books, including the Dhammapada, the Jatakas, the Sutta Nipata and the Therigatha. Editions count its books a little differently, around fifteen to eighteen.

Most suttas open with ’Thus have I heard’, words tradition credits to Ananda. Next comes the setting: where the Buddha was staying, such as a grove near Savatthi. Tradition says he recited the talks at the First Council.

Then someone asks a question or a problem arises. The asker might be a monk, a king, a farmer or a wanderer from another school. The Buddha, as the sutta presents him, answers, often with a simile, a comparison that makes an idea clear.

Suttas usually close with the listeners’ response. Often they are glad, or they ask to become followers. Reading these parts helps you see who is speaking to whom and why. Some even ask to become monks or nuns.

Readers new to the suttas notice how often lines repeat. A passage may be repeated almost word for word, changing just one item each time. Lists are everywhere: three kinds, four truths, five hindrances, eight path factors.

Scholars explain that these texts were passed down orally for centuries before being written. Repetition and numbered lists helped monks memorize and chant them together without error. This is called oral tradition.

Printed translations sometimes shorten the repeats with dots. But in chanting, the full repetition gives a steady rhythm. Many Buddhists say it also helps the meaning sink in. Some chanting groups spend an hour or more on one sutta.

The Vinaya Pitaka holds the rules for monks and nuns. It does not list them bare. For most rules, it tells the incident that led to the rule, then states the rule, then explains how to apply it.

For example, the Vinaya tells how the rains retreat was set after people complained that monks were trampling crops. Other rules deal with robes, food, begging, property and how to settle disputes.

Scholars value these stories as windows into early monastic life. Monks value them because a rule’s origin story shows its purpose. Knowing the purpose helps apply a rule wisely.

At the heart of the Vinaya is the Patimokkha, a list of rules. In the Theravada Vinaya, monks keep 227 rules, and nuns keep 311. Other Vinaya traditions give slightly different numbers.

The rules are grouped by seriousness. The most serious, called parajika, lead to leaving the monkhood, for example killing a human or stealing. Lesser rules are fixed by confession.

On full moon and new moon Uposatha days, monks gather and recite the Patimokkha. Any monk who has broken a rule confesses it before the recitation. This keeps the community accountable.

The Vinaya tells that Mahapajapati, the Buddha’s aunt and foster mother, asked to become a nun. According to the text, the Buddha agreed only after Ananda asked on her behalf, and nuns accepted eight extra rules, called garudhammas, that placed them under monks.

In Theravada lands, the line of fully ordained nuns died out around the 11th century. Since the 1990s, some Theravada monks have ordained women again, while others say this cannot be done under the Vinaya.

Scholars and Buddhists read the eight rules in different ways. Some see them as reflecting the customs of their time; others treat them as binding. East Asian traditions kept a strong line of nuns throughout. This is an ongoing debate about ordination.

The third basket, the Abhidhamma Pitaka, has seven books. Instead of stories and talks, it offers careful lists and analysis. It breaks experience into tiny moments and sorts them by type.

For example, it lists kinds of consciousness, mental factors such as attention and greed, and forms of matter. Theravada teachers use these lists to explain how the mind works from moment to moment.

Theravada tradition says the Buddha first taught the Abhidhamma to the gods. Many scholars think it was developed by monks over later centuries. Monks in Myanmar are known for memorizing it, and it is chanted at funerals in some countries. Its method is analysis.

Thomas William Rhys Davids (1843–1922) was a British scholar who learned Pali while working in Sri Lanka. In 1881 he published Buddhist Suttas, volume 11 of the Sacred Books of the East series.

The volume includes the first sermon, the Book of the Great Decease (Digha Nikaya 16) and the Tevijja Sutta. For many English readers, this was their first close look at the suttas.

Rhys Davids’ English now sounds old-fashioned, with words like ’thee’ and ’verily’. Scholars have corrected some of his readings. But his translations are in the public domain, so students can quote them freely.

Also in 1881, Rhys Davids founded the Pali Text Society in London. Its goal was to print the Pali Canon in Roman letters, so scholars everywhere could read it. Its first president was Rhys Davids himself.

Before this, Pali texts were written in Sinhala, Burmese, Thai and other scripts, often on palm leaves. The society collected manuscripts and made careful printed editions. It later added English translations and a Pali-English dictionary.

Scholars still cite Pali texts by the society’s volume and page numbers. The society’s work shows how Asian monks and Western scholars together shaped modern study of the manuscripts.

The Dhammapada, ’verses on the Dhamma’, is one of the best-loved Buddhist texts. It has 423 verses in 26 chapters, with titles like ’The Mind’, ’Anger’ and ’The Fool’. Many Buddhists memorize verses from it.

Each verse is short and easy to remember, often built on a contrast: the wise and the foolish, anger and love, a calm mind and a restless one. The first verses begin with the mind as the source of what we do.

Theravada Buddhists teach the Dhammapada to children and quote it in sermons. It has been translated into English many times, starting with Max Müller’s version in 1881. Its verses are also read widely beyond Buddhism.

The Sutta Nipata, also in the Khuddaka Nikaya, gathers talks mostly in verse. Many scholars think some of its sections, like the Atthakavagga, are among the oldest parts of the Pali Canon, based on their language and style.

It includes the Metta Sutta, on loving-kindness, which is chanted widely in Theravada lands. It also includes the Rhinoceros Sutta, which praises living alone and free, ’like a rhinoceros horn’.

Its verses show an early picture of the wandering monk. Scholars read it for clues about early Buddhist ideals, while Theravada Buddhists chant its verses at blessings and ceremonies. Its central word is metta.

Two books in the Khuddaka Nikaya gather poems credited to early disciples. The Theragatha holds verses of elder monks. The Therigatha holds verses of elder nuns. Each poem is linked to a named person.

The poems are personal. Speakers describe their lives before becoming monks or nuns, their struggles, and the peace they say they found. Some are mothers who lost children; some were servants; some were rich.

Scholars note that the Therigatha is among the oldest collections of women’s poetry anywhere. Its voice is unusual in ancient literature: women speaking of their own spiritual lives.

The Jataka collection holds 547 stories of the Buddha’s past lives, as Buddhists tell them. In each, the future Buddha, called the Bodhisatta, appears as a human, animal or god.

Each Jataka has three parts. First comes a story in the present: something happens among the Buddha’s monks. Then the Buddha tells a story of the past. Last comes the link, naming who each character was reborn as, such as ’the monkey king was I’.

The verses inside each Jataka are counted as canonical. The prose stories around them come from a later commentary. This is why scholars speak of layers in the text. Scholars date the commentary to around the 5th century CE.

Jataka stories appear on the gateways of Sanchi, the walls of Borobudur and the painted caves of Ajanta in India. Artists showed several scenes of one story in a single panel. Visitors still walk past these panels today.

In Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, the last ten Jatakas, called the Ten Great Births, are especially loved. The last, the Vessantara Jataka, is performed or recited at a yearly festival in some places.

In the Vessantara Jataka, Prince Vessantara gives away everything, even his wife and children. Many Buddhists see it as a picture of perfect generosity. Some Buddhist listeners have found it painful and ask hard questions about it. The story ends with the family reunited.

Between 1895 and 1907, Cambridge scholar E.B. Cowell edited The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births in six volumes. Several translators shared the work, including Robert Chalmers, W.H.D. Rouse, H.T. Francis, R.A. Neil and E.J. Thomas.

This was the first complete English Jataka. It is now in the public domain. In 1916, Francis and Thomas published a shorter selection called Jataka Tales for general readers. Many school libraries still hold it.

Like other translations of its time, the English is formal and sometimes old-fashioned. Modern scholars check it against the Pali. Still, it remains a key source for students who want to read the tales in full.

Buddhaghosa was an Indian monk who came to Sri Lanka in the 5th century CE, tradition says. At the Great Monastery in Anuradhapura, he studied old commentaries written in Sinhala.

He put these commentaries into Pali. His best-known work, the Visuddhimagga or ’Path of Purification’, is a large guide to Theravada teaching and practice. Many commentaries on the suttas are credited to him.

A commentary explains a text, word by word or story by story. For many Theravada Buddhists, reading the Canon means reading it through Buddhaghosa. Modern scholars sometimes compare his readings with the older texts.

A genre is a kind of writing with its own shape and purpose. The Pali Canon holds many genres: rules in the Vinaya, talks in the suttas, lists in the Abhidhamma, verses in the Dhammapada, songs in the Therigatha, stories in the Jatakas.

Each genre works differently. A rule tells what to do. A talk explains and argues. A verse sticks in memory. A story builds feelings and shows values in action. A song gives a personal voice.

Knowing the genre helps a reader ask the right questions. You would not read the Therigatha like a rulebook, or the Vinaya like a poem. Scholars call this paying attention to form.

Take the teaching of impermanence, the idea that all things change. In a sutta, the Buddha, as the text presents him, argues it step by step. In the Dhammapada, a short verse states it memorably.

In a Jataka, a character learns it through events. In the Therigatha, Ambapali sings it as she looks at her aging body. Each form reaches readers in a different way. Ambapali uses the same idea in her song.

Buddhist teachers have long used many forms to reach many kinds of people. Scholars of religion see this range of genres as one reason these texts have lasted. They call a text’s intended readers its audience.

In the Makhadeva Jataka, a long-lived king tells his barber to warn him when he sees a gray hair. One day the barber finds one and pulls it out. He waits many years before the barber finds one. The king then calls his son to him.

Looking at the gray hair, the king feels that death has come near. He hands his kingdom to his son and leaves to live as an ascetic. The tale’s final link names the Bodhisatta as King Makhadeva.

Buddhist teachers use this story to talk about change and priorities. Readers notice how it matches Ambapali’s song: both use gray hair as a sign of impermanence. Here, one image connects two genres, story and song, and becomes a motif.