Buddhist canons
[1][2][3][4] Some of these collections are also called Tipiṭaka (Pali: [tɪˈpɪʈɐkɐ]) or Tripiṭaka (Sanskrit: [trɪˈpɪʈɐkɐ]) , meaning "Triple Basket",[1] a traditional term for the three main divisions of some ancient canons.
In ancient India, there were several Buddhist scriptural canons that were organized into three main textual divisions: Vinaya (monastic rule), Sutra (which contains teachings of the Buddha) and Abhidharma (which are more systematic and scholastic works).
[1] These "three baskets" recall the receptacles of palm-leaf manuscripts and refer to three important textual divisions of early Buddhist literature: Suttas, the Vinaya, and the Abhidhamma.
[11][12] Likewise, some Buddhist schools in India also maintained Bodhisattva Piṭakas, which contained texts that were later termed "Mahayana".
[13] According to Yijing, an 8th-century Chinese pilgrim to India, the Nikaya Buddhist schools kept different sets of canonical texts with some intentional or unintentional dissimilarities.
[15] According to A. K. Warder, the Tibetan historian Bu-ston said that around or before the 1st century CE there were eighteen schools of Buddhism each with their own Tripiṭaka transcribed into written form.
[17][18] Various ancient sources (like Bhāvaviveka, and Paramārtha) also indicate that the different branches of the Mahāsāṃghika tradition (such as the Bahuśrutīya) had a Bodhisattva Piṭaka in their canon.
[19][20] The 6th century CE Indian monk Paramārtha wrote that 200 years after the parinirvāṇa of the Buddha, much of the Mahāsāṃghika school moved north of Rājagṛha, where they became divided over whether the Mahāyāna sūtras should be incorporated formally into their Tripiṭaka.
According to this account, they split into three groups based upon the relative manner and degree to which they accepted the authority of these Mahāyāna texts.
[22] Also in the 6th century CE, Avalokitavrata writes of the Mahāsāṃghikas using a "Great Āgama Piṭaka," which is then associated with Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Prajñāparamitā and the Daśabhūmika Sūtra.
On the basis of textual evidence as well as inscriptions at Nāgārjunakoṇḍā, Joseph Walser concludes that at least some Mahāsāṃghika sects probably had an Abhidharma collection, and that it likely contained five or six books.
Paramārtha cites this Bahuśrutīya abhidharma as containing a combination of Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna doctrines, and Joseph Walser agrees that this assessment is correct.
A complete version of the Dīrgha Āgama (Taishō Tripiṭaka 1) of the Dharmaguptaka school was translated into Chinese by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian (竺佛念) in the Later Qin dynasty, dated to 413 CE.
[36] Scholars at present have "a nearly complete collection of sūtras from the Sarvāstivāda school" thanks to a recent discovery in Afghanistan of roughly two-thirds of Dīrgha Āgama in Sanskrit.
[39] The Pāli Canon is the complete Tripiṭaka set maintained by the Theravāda tradition as written and preserved in Pali.
Max Müller states that the current structure and contents of the Pali Canon took shape in the 3rd century BCE after which it continued to be transmitted orally from generation to generation until finally being put into written form in the 1st century BCE (nearly 500 years after the lifetime of Buddha).
[41][42] The Theravada chronicle called the Dipavamsa states that during the reign of Valagamba of Anuradhapura (29–17 BCE) the monks who had previously remembered the Tipiṭaka and its commentary orally now wrote them down in books, because of the threat posed by famine and war.
[16] The resulting texts were later partly translated into a number of East Asian languages such as Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian by ancient visiting scholars, which though extensive are incomplete.
[3][42][45] The structure, the code of conduct and moral virtues in the Vinaya basket particularly, have similarities to some of the surviving Dharmasutra texts of Hinduism.
The traditional term for the canon is "Great Storage of Scriptures" (traditional Chinese: 大藏經; simplified Chinese: 大藏经; pinyin: Dàzàngjīng; Japanese: 大蔵経; rōmaji: Daizōkyō; Korean: 대장경; romaja: Daejanggyeong; Vietnamese: Đại tạng kinh).
[47] Wu and Chia state that emerging evidence, though uncertain, suggests that the earliest written Buddhist Tripiṭaka texts may have arrived in China from India by the 1st century BCE.
Zhisheng introduced the basic six-fold division with two sets of sutra, vinaya, and abhidharma works classified as Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna.
The Taishō Daizōkyō is the standard modern edition as systematized by Japanese scholars, published in Japan from 1924 to 1929.
[51] While still referred to by the traditional term "Tripiṭaka", it is actually divided into many more textual categories, including: Āgamas (equivalent to Nikāyas), Jātakas, Mahāyāna Sūtras, Esoteric texts, Vinaya, Sutra Commentaries, Abhidharma, Mahayana Śāstras (‘Treatises’), Chinese commentaries, Chinese Treatises, Histories and biographies.
[55] It is distinct for its emphasis on preserving the Sanskrit originals of many Mahayana and Vajrayana scriptures, which have otherwise been lost in India and survived only in translations in regions like Tibet and China.
[55] The Kathmandu Valley has long been a center for Buddhist scholarship, particularly following the destruction of Indian monasteries after the 12th-century Muslim conquests.
[56] From the 19th century onwards, Sanskrit manuscripts from Nepal were collected and sent to academic institutions in Calcutta and Europe by figures like Brian H. Hodgson, contributing to modern Buddhist studies.
Newar texts often used bilingual formats, integrating Sanskrit and Newari, and employed diverse calligraphic scripts like Newā Lipi and Rañjana.
[58] The scope of the DSBC project is vast, encompassing the digitization of at least 600 Mahayana Buddhist sutras that have survived in Sanskrit.
As of now, the DSBC has successfully digitized over 604 texts, equating to roughly 50,000 pages, with more than 369 scriptures available on its official website.
