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. Some editions have a set of verses at the end that might be interpreted as naming the author as Dīpa or Dīpanāma; alternatively, he might be the editor, or just the scribe.

Sutta- or Suttantapiṭaka

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.