Pali Canon/Bibliography

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Editions of the Canon

• 1st Siamese edition (incomplete), 39 volumes, 1893. This edition is now available in electronic form at [1].
• 1st Burmese edition, based on the Fifth Council inscriptions, 1900, 38 volumes. It was later superseded by the Sixth Council edition.
• Pali Text Society edition, 1877-1927, 57 volumes, including index volumes. Individual volumes and subsets are also available separately. Details can be found on the Society's website. A few volumes have been replaced with new editions since 1927.
• 2nd Siamese edition, 45 volumes, 1925-1928. It is more accurate than the PTS edition, but gives fewer variant readings. An electronic transcript is now available online at [2], with options for Latin, Thai, Sinhalese and devanagari scripts.
• Sixth Council edition, 1954-1956, 40 volumes. This is more accurate than the Siamese edition, but with fewer variant readings. Recently, in addition to the original Burmese script edition, Latin and devanagari versions have appeared in print. Two online transcripts are now available:
  • [3]: sponsored by the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand, displays in Latin script
  • [4]: has options for a variety of scripts.
• Nalanda edition (first Indian edition), 41 volumes (in devanagari script), 1957-1961. It was based mainly on the 6th Council text. It gradually went out of print.
• Khmer edition: This is a parallel-text edition, with Khmer translations on facing pages. 1931-1969. The Khmers Rouges burnt every set in the country, with only a few surviving elsewhere.
• Buddha Jayanti edition: This Sinhalese edition is another parallel-text one, 1958-?1993, 58 volumes. An electronic transcript, not yet fully proofread, is available online at [5]; the files can be downloaded from [6].
• Bhumibalo edition (Thailand) This is a currently ongoing project.