Pali Canon/Addendum

This addendum will give a detailed account of the Pali Canon.

The usual arrangement of the Canon is as follows:

1. Vinayapiṭaka
2. Sutta- or Suttantapiṭaka
   1. Dīghanikāya
   2. Majjhimanikāya
   3. Saṃyuttanikāya
   4. Aṅguttaranikāya
   5. Khuddakanikāya
3. Abhidhammapiṭaka

An alternative arrangement is in nikāyas, with the Vinaya and Abhidhamma included in the Khuddakanikāya, either before or after the Sutta parts. The inscriptions approved by the Fifth Council are arranged Vinaya, Abhidhamma, Sutta, while the Sixth Council recited the texts in the order listed above except for placing the Khuddakanikāya at the end.

Abbreviations

• B: Burmese edition; volume numbers are taken from the imprints pages of the 2008 Latin-script issue
• C: Ceylon edition
• E: English edition, PTS
• K: Khmer edition
• N: Nalanda nagari edition
• PTS: Pali Text Society
• S: (2nd) Siamese edition

Vinayapiṭaka

B1-5; C1-6; K1-13; S1-8; EN 5 volumes.

English translation: The Book of the Discipline, tr I. B. Horner, 1938-1966, 6 volumes, PTS.

This division of the Canon is primarily concerned with the rules of monastic discipline, though the stories of the origins of the rules sometimes seem to take on a life of their own.

Western scholarship, based on some secondary accounts in the tradition, commonly divides the Vinaya into three parts:

1. Suttavibhaṅga
2. Khandhaka
3. Parivāra

However, the title pages of the various editions usually do not use this division explicitly. Instead, BC divide as

1. Pārājika
2. Pācittiya
3. Mahāvagga
4. Cūḷa- (B) or Culla- (C) -vagga
5. Parivāra

while KS have

1. Mahāvibhaṅga
2. Bhikkhunīvibhaṅga
3. Mahāvagga
4. Cullavagga
5. Parivāra

In each case 1 and 2 constitute the Suttavibhaṅga, 3 and 4 the Khandhaka. The editor of E chose to interchange these two parts, and N does likewise.

The Western division is one of literary entities.

According to Professor von Hinüber, tentatively supported by Dr Gethin (President of the PTS), the Vinaya is, on the whole, later than the first four nikāyas of the Suttapiṭaka.

Suttavibhaṅga

This is a commentary on the Pātimokkha, a text not actually included in the Canon as such, though most of it appears embedded in this commentary. (It appears in the Burmese and Sinhalese editions of the commentaries.) This consists of a set of rules for monks and nuns. The division into Mahāvibhaṅga and Bhikkhunīvibhaṅga follows the division of the Pātimokkha into monks' and nuns' sections. Mahā means great, this division being substantially longer. Bhikkhunī means nun.

Each of these in turn is divided into groups of different types of offences, with the most serious first. The first of these is called Pārājika, and the first in the second volume of BC is called Pācittiya, so the volume titles used in BC are artificial incipit-type titles. The whole of the nuns' division is in the second volume.

The pattern of the commentary on each rule is to start with an introductory story telling how the Buddha came to lay down the rule, and then to follow it with a detailed explanation. Scholars disagree on whether the rules go back to the Buddha himself, but agree that the rest of the material is later.

Khandhaka

This is arranged topically in 22 khandhakas. The division into vaggas is common in the Canon. They are usually groups of 10 or so.

Each khandhaka presents rules on a particular topic, embedded in a single narrative framework, explaining as above how the Buddha came to lay down the rules, except for the last two. These give narratives of the first two Buddhist councils.

Parivāra

This book mostly abandons the narrative framework, analysing the vinaya in many ways.

It includes a long list of Vinaya teachers in Ceylon, starting from the introduction of Buddhism there around 250 BC, so even fundamentalists accept that, in its present form at least, it must be late. Scholars tend to give dates around the first century AD. BE have a set of verses at the end that seem to name the author as Dīpa or Dīpanāma. The commentaries say this text was recited at the First Council, shortly after the Buddha's death, with the list of Vinaya teachers added by the Fourth Council in the last century BC.

Sutta- or Suttantapiṭaka

B6-28; C7-40; K14-77; S9-33

Sutta- is used by Western scholars and N. BCKS have Suttanta-.

This is divided into five as listed above. The first four are fairly similar collections, mainly prose, with a narrative framework similar in style to those in the Vinaya above.

Professor Warder considers that each of the five was expanded over time by the addition of new suttas, and that the order of authenticity is the canonical order. That is, he considers the Dīgha has the least later material. The late Professor Hirakawa, in contrast, held that suttas started short, as in the Saṃyutta and Aṅguttara, and were later expanded and combined. L. S. Cousins, meanwhile, pictures early suttas as improvised within a pattern of teaching and only gradually becoming fixed.

Dīghanikāya

B6-8; C7-9; S9-11; EN also 3 volumes

Translations

• Dialogues of the Buddha, tr T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids, 1899-1921, 3 volumes, Pali Text Society[1]
• Thus Have I Heard: the Long Discourses of the Buddha, tr Maurice Walshe, Wisdom Pubns, 1987; later reissued under the original subtitle; ISBN 0-86171-103-3

Consists of 34 "long" (dīgha) discourses. This length classification is not precise: the shortest of these are shorter than the longest below, and so on.

Majjhimanikāya

B9-11; C10-12; S12-14; EN also 3 volumes

Translations:

• Lord Chalmers (trans.), Further Dialogues of the Buddha, 1926-7, 2 volumes, Ann Arbor: Books on Demand, University of Michigan.
• I.B. Horner (trans.), The Book of Middle Length Sayings, 1954-9, 3 volumes, Bristol: Pali Text Society.
• David W. Evans (trans.), Discourses of Gotama Buddha: Middle Collection, 1991, Janus Pubns. "Translation in an abridged form ... just about one third the size of Horner's translation, but with well over 90% of the significant content"
• Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (trans.), The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, 1995, Somerville: Wisdom Publications ISBN 0-86171-072-X. The Pali Text Society also issues a private edition of this for members only, which is its preferred translation. review

152 medium-length discourses.

Saṃyuttanikāya

B12-14; C13-17; S15-19; E 5 volumes; N 4 volumes

Translations:

• The Book of the Kindred Sayings, tr C. A. F. Rhys Davids & F. L. Woodward, 1917-30, 5 volumes, Pali Text Society[2], Bristol
• The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, tr Bhikkhu Bodhi, 2000, Wisdom Publications, Somerville, MA, ISBN 0-86171-331-1; the Pali Text Society also issues a private edition of this for members only, which is its preferred translation

This book consists of discourses grouped together by topic, person or whatever. The correct number of such saṃyuttas seems to be 56 as in BEN. There are some anomalies in the headings of CS.

Because of the abbreviated way parts of the text are written, the total number of suttas is unclear. The editor of the Pali Text Society edition of the text made it 2889, Bodhi in his translation has 2904, while the commentaries give 7762. A study by Dr Rupert Gethin gives the totals for the Burmese and Sinhalese editions as 2854 and 7656, respectively, and his own calculation as 6696; he also says the total in the Thai edition is unclear.

Aṅguttaranikāya

B15-17; C18-23; S20-24; E 5 volumes; N 4 volumes

Translations:

• The Book of the Gradual Sayings, tr F. L. Woodward & E. M. Hare, 1932-6, 5 volumes, Pali Text Society[3], Bristol
• The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, tr Bhikkhu Bodhi, 2012, Wisdom Publications; the Pali Text Society issues a private edition of this translation, which is its preferred version

This book comprises thousands of short discourses, like the previous one, but this time arranged numerically, by the numbers of items listed, from 1 to 11.

Khuddakanikāya

B18-28; C24-40; S25-33

The contents of this collection vary between editions. K has the following:

1. Khuddakapāṭha
2. Dhammapada
3. Udāna
4. Itivuttaka
5. Suttanipāta
6. Vimānavatthu
7. Petavatthu
8. Theragāthā
9. Therīgāthā
10. Jātaka
11. Niddesa
12. Paṭisambhidāmagga
13. Apadāna
14. Buddhavaṃsa
15. Cariyāpiṭaka
16. Nettippakaraṇa
17. Peṭakopadesa
18. Milindapañha

B has the same books in a different order, with 13-15 between 9 and 10; C has 1-17; ENS have 1-15. The first Siamese edition has only 1-5, 11, 12.

Khuddakapāṭha

In B18, C24, S25

This consists of 9 short texts in prose or verse.

Translations:

• Tr R. C. Childers, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1869
• Tr F. L. Woodward, in Some Sayings of the Buddha, 1925
• "The text of the minor sayings", in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume I, tr C. A. F. Rhys Davids, 1931, Pali Text Society[4], out of print (also out of copyright)
• "The minor readings", in 1 volume with "The illustrator of ultimate meaning", its commentary, tr Nanamoli, 1960, Pali Text Society, Bristol
• In Handful of Leaves (Vol. 4), tr Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Sati Center for Buddhist Studies, Santa Cruz, 2003

Professor Norman tentatively argues this is the latest text in this nikaya.

Dhammapada

In B18, C24, S25

There are about 80 English translations. Here are a few:

• Tr F. Max Müller, in Buddhist Parables, by E. W. Burlinghame, 1869; reprinted in Sacred Books of the East, volume X, Clarendon/Oxford, 1881; reprinted in Buddhism, by Clarence Hamilton; reprinted separately by Watkins, 2006; reprinted 2008 by Red and Black Publishers, St Petersburg, Florida, ISBN 978-1-934941-03-4; revised Jack Maguire, SkyLight Pubns, Woodstock, Vermont, 2002: the first English translation (a Latin translation by V. Fausbøll had appeared in 1855)
• Tr Narada, John Murray, London, 1954; a traditional Theravada version
• Tr Buddharakkhita, Maha Bodhi Society, Bangalore, 1959; 4th edn, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 1996; includes Pali text; another traditional one
• The Word of the Doctrine, tr K. R. Norman, 1997, Pali Text Society, Bristol

423 verses in 26 chapters.

Traditionally ascribed to the Buddha. Professor Warder, on the basis of metrical analysis, gives an average date of early 3rd century BC. Some scholars place it earlier.

Udāna

In B18, C24, S25

Translations:

• Tr Major-General D. M. Strong, 1902
• "Verses of uplift", in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume II, tr F. L. Woodward, 1935, Pali Text Society[5], Bristol
• Tr John D. Ireland, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 1990; later reprinted in 1 volume with his translation of the Itivuttaka
• Tr Peter Masefield, 1994, Pali Text Society, Bristol; the PTS's preferred translation; its declared aim is to translate in accordance with the commentary's interpretation

Consists of 80 narratives in sutta style leading up to the udānas proper, short passages nearly all in verse.

Itivuttaka

In B18, C24, S25

Translations:

• Sayings of Buddha, tr J. H. Moore, Columbia University Press, 1908
• "As it was said", in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume II, tr F. L. Woodward, 1935, Pali Text Society[6], Bristol
• Tr John D. Ireland, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 1991; later reprinted in 1 volume with his translation of the Udana
• Tr Peter Masefield, 2000, Pali Text Society, Bristol; the PTS's preferred translation; its declared aim is to translate in accordance with the commentary's interpretation

Consists of 112 pieces, each consisting of prose followed by verse. In some, the verse is just a paraphrase of the prose; in others it complements it. The framing formulae ascribe the text to the Buddha.

Suttanipāta

In B18, S25; C25

Translations:

• Tr Viggo Fausbøll, in Sacred Books of the East, volume X, Clarendon/Oxford, 1881; reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi (?and by Dover, New York)
• Buddha's Teachings, tr Lord Chalmers, Harvard Oriental Series, 1932
• Woven Cadences, tr E. M. Hare, 1945, out of print
• The Group of Discourses, tr K. R. Norman, 1984, Pali Text Society[7], Bristol; the original edition included alternative translations by I. B. Horner & Walpola Rahula; these are currently available in the paperback edition under the title The Rhinoceros Horn and Other Early Buddhist Poems; the current edition under the original title omits these, but includes instead the translator's notes, not included in the paperback
• Tr Saddhatissa, Curzon, London/Humanities Press, New York, 1985
• Tr N. A. Jayawickrama, University of Kelaniya, 2001

This book is divided into five sections. The first four comprise 54 suttas. The last is one long text in 16 sections plus introduction and conclusion. It is basically a poetic book, though some of the suttas embed the verse in a prose narrative framework.

Some scholars consider this the oldest of all Buddhist scriptures. Others put it on a par with the first four nikāyas.

Vimānavatthu

In B19, S26; C26

Translations:

• "Stories of the mansions", tr Jean Kennedy, in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume IV, 1st edn, 1942
• ? Kennedy mentions an ongoing translation in instalments by P. Vajiranana and B. L. Broughton appearing in the Maha-Bodhi Journal; it is not clear from this reference whether the translation was ever completed
• "Stories of the mansions", tr I. B. Horner, in Minor Anthologies IV, 2nd edn, 1974, Pali Text Society[8], Bristol
• In Vimana Stories, tr Peter Masefield, 1989, Pali Text Society, Bristol; translation of the commentary, with the verses embedded; the PTS's preferred translation

This book consists of 85 poems. Typically, someone, most often the Buddha's disciple Moggallāna, addresses a deity, describing their "mansion" (vimāna), and asking what meritorious deed it is the reward of, and the deity replies.

Professor Warder says the contents are all later than 200 BC and the average date may be as much as a century later.

Petavatthu

In B19, S26; C27

Translations:

• "Stories of the departed", tr Henry S. Gehman, in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume IV, 1942, Pali Text Society[9], Bristol
• In Peta-Stories, tr U Ba Kyaw & Peter Masefield, 1980, Pali Text Society, Bristol; translation of the commentary, with the verses embedded; the PTS's preferred translation

This book is the obverse of the preceding one. It consists of 51 poems. In this case a ghost (peta) is addressed, their sufferings are described, and the explanation is in terms of demeritorious deeds, most often meannness in donations to the monks. It gives prominence to the doctrine that giving alms to monks may benefit the ghosts of one's relatives.

Date as the preceding book.

Theragāthā

In B19, S26; C28

Translations:

• Psalms of the Brethren, tr C. A. F. Rhys Davids, 1913; reprinted in Psalms of the Early Buddhists, Pali Text Society[10], Bristol; this includes some stories from the commentary, which was written by Dhammapala, either in India or in Ceylon, some time between the 6th and the 10th century
• Elders' Verses, volume I, tr K. R. Norman, 1969, Pali Text Society, Bristol; the PTS's preferred translation; also available in paperback as Poems of Early Buddhist Monks, without the translator's notes

Consists of 264 poems, in roughly increasing order of length. They are ascribed to various monks, most personal disciples of the Buddha. Warder gives an average date of 4th century BC.

Therīgāthā

In B19, S26; C29

Translations:

• Psalms of the Sisters, tr C. A. F. Rhys Davids, 1909; reprinted in Psalms of the Early Buddhists, Pali Text Society[11], Bristol; verse translation, together with some stories from the commentary
• Elders' Verses, tr K. R. Norman, volume II, 1971, Pali Text Society, Bristol
• Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns, the two translations reprinted in one paperback volume without Mr Norman's notes, but including extracts from the commentary translated by Mrs Rhys Davids.
• The Commentary on the Verses of the Therīs, tr William Pruitt, 1998, Pali Text Society, Bristol; translation of commentary, with canonical text embedded

Corresponding work for nuns; 73 poems.

Jātaka

B22-23; C30-32; S27-28; E 6 volumes; N 1 volume in 2

Translated by E. B. Cowell and others, originally published in six volumes by Cambridge University Press, 1895-1907; reprinted in three volumes, Pali Text Society

This book comprises 547 poems, one of which also includes a substantial amount of prose. They are arranged roughly in increasing order of length. They are often more or less unintelligible through lack of context. The Niddesa says the Buddha taught them with reference to the past of himself and others. The traditional commentary gives stories of the Buddha's previous lives, providing a context, not necessarily correct. The translation includes these stories, but does not always clearly distinguish Canon and commentary. Warder gives an average date of 4th century BC.

Niddesa

B24-25; C33-34; S29-30; E 3 volumes reprinted in 2; N 2 volumes in 1.

Although this is usually described as a single book in secondary sources, even traditional ones, the actual title pages generally have no such heading, instead treating it as 2 books, Mahā- and Cūḷa- (BS) or Culla- (CE) -niddesa.

There seems to be no English translation.

This book is a commentary on parts of the Suttanipāta.

Tradition ascribes this book to the Buddha's disciple Sāriputta. Scholars do not accept this. Some date it around 250 BC, others to the 2nd century AD.

Paṭisambhidāmagga

B26; C35; S31

Translation: The Path of Discrimination, tr Nanamoli, 1982, PTS

Consists of 30 treatises.

Again traditionally ascribed to Sāriputta. A wide range of dates have been suggested by scholars.

Apadāna

C36-37; in B20-21, S32-33

There seems to be no English translation.

Consists of 603 (BCN), 592 (S) or 589 (E) poems. Typically, each is told by a monk or nun, and tells how they performed some meritorious act in a distant past life, and as a result experienced favourable rebirths and eventually attained nirvana. The meritorious deeds are mostly devotional in nature, but sometimes moral.

Generally recognized by scholars as one of the latest books of the Canon; Warder says all later than 200 BC, average date may be as much as a century later.

Buddhavaṃsa

In B21, C38, S33

Translations:

• "The lineage of the Buddhas", in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume III, 1st edition, tr B. C. Law, 1938
• The Genealogy of the Buddhas, tr M. V. Takin, Bombay University Publications, 1969
• "Chronicle of Buddhas", in Minor Anthologies III, 2nd edition, tr I. B. Horner, 1975, Pali Text Society

Another verse book, in which the Buddha tells of previous Buddhas and the acts of merit he performed in previous lives towards them.

Professor Warder says this is later than the Apadāna, Professor von Hinüber the reverse.

Cariyāpiṭaka

In B21, C38, S33

Translations:

• "The collection of the ways of conduct", in Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon, volume III, 1st edition, tr B. C. Law, 1938
• "Basket of conduct", in Minor Anthologies III, 2nd edition, tr I. B. Horner, 1975, Pali Text Society

Verse book in which the Buddha tells of his practice of the perfections in previous lives.

Warder dates this as later than the Apadāna.