Sutta Pitaka

Table of Contents

Introduction References & Edit History Related Topics

Images

Sutta Pitaka

Buddhist literature

Also known as: “Sutra Pitaka”

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Pali:: “Basket of Discourse”

Sanskrit:: Sutra Pitaka

See all related content

Sutta Pitaka, extensive body of texts constituting the basic doctrinal section of the Buddhist canon—properly speaking, the canon of the so-called Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) doctrinal schools, including the Theravada (Way of the Elders) form of Buddhism predominant in present-day Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Southeast Asia. The contents of the Sutta Pitaka are attributed, with few exceptions, to the Gautama Buddha himself. The schools whose works were written in Sanskrit divided this body of literature into four collections, called Agamas. Roughly comparable collections, called Nikayas, comprise the Pali texts of the Theravada school, but with a fifth group added—the Khuddaka Nikaya (“Short Collection”). The other four Nikayas are as follows:

1. Digha Nikaya (“Long Collection”; Sanskrit Dirghagama), 34 long suttas including doctrinal expositions, legends, and moral rules. The first, the Brahmajala Sutta (“Discourse on the Divine Net”), renowned and much quoted, deals with fundamental Buddhist doctrines and with rival philosophies and tells much about everyday life and religious practices of the period. The Ambattha Sutta (“Discourse of Ambattha”) denounces the principles of caste and the pretensions of Brahmins. The Mahanidana Sutta (“Discourse on the Great Origin”) gives the fullest canonical treatment of the doctrine of dependent origination, or the chain of causation. The famous Mahaparinibbana Sutta (“Discourse on the Great Final Extinction”—i.e., the Buddha’s release from the round of rebirths), one of the oldest texts in the canon (though containing later interpolations), narrates the activities and teachings of the Buddha’s last year and describes his death. The Sigalovada Sutta (“Discourse of Sigalovada”), the only one of these discourses directly addressed to laymen, is a comprehensive treatment of domestic and social ethics.

2. Majjhima Nikaya (“Medium [Length] Collection”; Sanskrit Madhyamagama), 152 suttas, some of them attributed to disciples, covering nearly all aspects of Buddhism. Included are texts dealing with monastic life, the excesses of asceticism, the evils of caste, Buddha’s debates with the Jains, and meditation, together with basic doctrinal and ethical teachings and many legends and stories.

3. Samyutta Nikaya (“Cluster Collection”; Sanskrit Samyuktagama), a total of 7,762 individual suttas, some quite brief, arranged more or less by subject matter into 56 samyuttas, or “clusters.” The best known of these is the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta (“Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of the Law”), which contains the Buddha’s first sermon.

4. Anguttara Nikaya (“Item-more Collection”; Sanskrit Ekottarikagama), a numerical arrangement, for mnemonic purposes, of 9,557 terse suttas. Its first nipata (“group”) contains suttas dealing with single things, such as the mind or the Buddha; the suttas in the second nipata speak of pairs—e.g., 2 kinds of sin; in the third there are triplets; and so on up to 11. Examples are the 3 praiseworthy acts, the 4 places of pilgrimage, the 5 obstacles, the 6-fold duty of a monk, 7 kinds of wealth, 8 causes of earthquake, 9 types of person, 10 objects of contemplation, and 11 kinds of happiness.

Abhidhamma Pitaka

Table of Contents

Introduction References & Edit History Related Topics

Abhidhamma Pitaka

Buddhist canon

Also known as: “Abhidharma Pitaka”

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Pali:: “Basket of Special Doctrine” or “Further Doctrine”

Sanskrit:: Abhidharma Pitaka

See all related content

Abhidhamma Pitaka, the third—and historically the latest—of the three “baskets,” or collections of texts, that together compose the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism, the form predominant in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The other two collections are Sutta (“Discourse”; Sanskrit Sutra) and Vinaya (“Discipline”) Pitakas. Unlike Sutta and Vinaya, the seven Abhidhamma works are generally claimed to represent not the words of the Buddha himself but those of disciples and great scholars. Nevertheless, they are highly venerated, particularly in Myanmar (Burma).

The Abhidhamma texts are not systematic philosophical treatises but a detailed scholastic reworking, according to schematic classifications, of doctrinal material appearing in the Suttas. As such they represent a development in a rationalistic direction of summaries or numerical lists. The topics dealt with in Abhidhamma books include ethics, psychology, and epistemology.

As the last major division of the canon, the Abhidhamma corpus has had a checkered history. It was not accepted as canonical by the Mahasanghika (Sanskrit: Great Community) school, the forerunners of Mahayana. Another school included within it most of the Khuddaka Nikaya (“Short Collection”), the latest section of the Sutta Pitaka.

The Pali Abhidhamma Pitaka encompasses the following texts, or pakaranas: (1) Dhammasangani (“Summary of Dharma”), a psychologically oriented manual of ethics for advanced monks but long popular in Sri Lanka, (2) Vibhanga (“Division” or “Classification”—not to be confused with a Vinaya work or with several suttas bearing the same name), a kind of supplement to the Dhammasangani, treating many of the same topics, (3) Dhatukatha (“Discussion of Elements”), another supplementary work, (4) Puggalapannatti (“Designation of Person”), largely a collection of excerpts from the Anguttara Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka, classifying human characteristics in relation to stages on the Buddhist path and generally considered the earliest Abhidhamma text, (5) Kathavatthu (“Points of Controversy”), attributed to Moggaliputta, president of the third Buddhist Council (3rd century bc), the only work in the Pali canon assigned to a particular author, (6) Yamaka (“Pairs”), a series of questions on psychological phenomena, each dealt with in two opposite ways, and (7) Patthana (“Activations,” or “Causes”), a complex and voluminous treatment of causality and 23 other kinds of relationships between phenomena, mental or material. Historically one of the most important of the seven, the Kathavatthu is a series of questions from a heretical (i.e., non-Theravada) point of view, with their implications refuted in the answers; the long first chapter debates the existence of a soul.