The Tipitaka (Pali Canon)

01The council in the Saptaparni cave

Soon after the Buddha’s mahaparinirvana at Kushinagar, five hundred arahants met in the Saptaparni cave outside Rajagriha, with King Ajatashatru as patron and Mahakashyapa presiding. Upali, who had been a barber before he became a monk, recited the Vinaya. Ananda, the Buddha’s attendant for twenty-five years, recited the discourses, and that is why so many suttas begin “Evam me sutam”, thus have I heard. The whole sangha chanted each passage back together, so that it was fixed by many voices, never by one.

02Vaishali and Pataliputra

A century later the elder Yasa found monks at Vaishali accepting gold and silver and relaxing other rules, ten points in all. Seven hundred elders met there in the second council and judged the ten points against the Vinaya. In the time of Ashoka a third council met at Pataliputra under the elder Moggaliputta Tissa, the Theravada tradition records, to purify the sangha. The Kathavatthu, which answers the views of other schools, is held to have been set out there. From that council missions went out, and Ashoka’s son Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitta carried the teaching to Lanka.

03Written at Aluvihara

For four centuries the monks kept the canon by recitation, each group of bhanakas responsible for one nikaya. In the 1st century BCE, in the reign of King Vattagamani Abhaya, war and famine in Lanka made the elders fear it would be lost, and at the Aluvihara cave near Matale they wrote it on palm leaves. Buddhaghosa came from Bharat in the 5th century CE, wrote the Visuddhimagga, and put the old Sinhala commentaries into Pali. Theravada monks still read the canon through his eyes.

04Three baskets

Pitaka means basket, the kind workers passed hand to hand. The Vinaya Pitaka holds the rules of the sangha, and each rule comes with the incident that led the Buddha to lay it down. The Sutta Pitaka holds the discourses, given to kings and farmers, wanderers and brahmanas, in five nikayas. The Abhidhamma Pitaka analyses mind and matter into their smallest moments. Theravada tradition says the Buddha taught the Abhidhamma to his mother in the Tavatimsa heaven over one rainy season, and Sariputta received it from him day by day.

05The first sermon

At the Deer Park at Isipatana, now Sarnath, the Buddha spoke to the five ascetics who had once left him. There are two extremes a renunciant should not follow, he said: indulgence in sense pleasure and self-mortification. Between them lies the middle way, the noble eightfold path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. Then he taught the four noble truths, suffering, its arising, its ending and the path. The Samyutta Nikaya keeps this discourse as the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the turning of the wheel.

06Carved in marble

Myanmar counts two more councils. At Mandalay King Mindon had the whole canon carved on 729 marble slabs, each housed in its own small shrine around the Kuthodaw Pagoda, and in 1871 the elders met there to recite it as the Fifth Council. At Yangon from 1954 to 1956, for the 2,500th year of the Buddha’s parinirvana, monks from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Bharat met in the Sixth Council and produced the Chattha Sangayana edition. The Vipassana Research Institute at Igatpuri later printed that edition in Devanagari and put it online.

07Back in Bharat

The Pali canon was nearly unknown in Bharat for centuries. In 1881 T. W. Rhys Davids founded the Pali Text Society in London to print it in Roman letters. Then Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap of Nava Nalanda Mahavihara edited the whole Tipitaka in Devanagari, published between 1956 and 1961, so that Indian readers could read the Buddha’s words in a script they knew. Monks in Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar chant from it daily, and each December the International Tipitaka Chanting Ceremony fills Bodh Gaya with monks from a dozen countries.

08Lived through the year

On every full moon and new moon the monks of a vihara gather for uposatha and one of them recites the Patimokkha, the 227 rules of the bhikkhu, from memory. For the three months of the rains they keep vassa, staying in one place, and at its end lay families bring new robes at the kathina. In homes and at funerals monks chant paritta, protective suttas such as the Mangala, Ratana and Metta Suttas. The day begins for many lay Buddhists with the three refuges and the five precepts, in Pali, just as the canon gives them.

09Other canons, other schools

The Pali Tipitaka is the canon of the Theravada, the school of the elders. Other early schools kept their own collections in Sanskrit and Gandhari, and the Sarvastivada and Mulasarvastivada Agamas survive in part in Sanskrit fragments from Gilgit and Central Asia and in full in Chinese translation. Mahayana Buddhists keep the Chinese Tripitaka and the Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur, which hold these early texts alongside the Mahayana sutras. Monks from all these lineages chant side by side at Bodh Gaya, each in their own language.

What it contains

1. 1
   Vinaya: Suttavibhanga सुत्तविभङ्ग

   The Patimokkha rules, each explained with its origin story and word-by-word analysis. It has two parts, the Mahavibhanga for monks and the Bhikkhunivibhanga for nuns.

2. 2
   Vinaya: Khandhaka खन्धक

   The procedures of the sangha in two books. The Mahavagga opens with the Buddha’s enlightenment and the first ordinations, and covers uposatha, vassa and robes. The Cullavagga covers discipline and ends with the first and second councils.

3. 3
   Vinaya: Parivara परिवार

   A manual of summaries and questions for learning the Vinaya. Theravada tradition holds that it was compiled in Lanka.

4. 4
   Digha Nikaya दीघनिकाय

   34 long discourses in three books. They include the Brahmajala on wrong views, the Mahaparinibbana on the Buddha’s last days, and the Sigalovada, his advice to a young householder on family and friendship.

5. 5
   Majjhima Nikaya मज्झिमनिकाय

   152 middle-length discourses, arranged in three sets of fifty. Among them are the Satipatthana Sutta on the foundations of mindfulness and the Angulimala Sutta.

6. 6
   Samyutta Nikaya संयुत्तनिकाय

   Discourses grouped by subject into 56 samyuttas in five books: on dependent origination, the aggregates, the senses, the path. The first sermon at Sarnath, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, is SN 56.11.

7. 7
   Anguttara Nikaya अङ्गुत्तरनिकाय

   Discourses arranged by number in eleven books, from things that come in ones to things that come in elevens. It includes the Kalama Sutta, on testing a teaching for yourself.

8. 8
   Khuddaka Nikaya खुद्दकनिकाय

   The minor collection: 15 books in the Sri Lankan and Thai reckoning, 18 in the Burmese. It holds the Dhammapada, Udana, Itivuttaka, Sutta Nipata, the verses of the elder monks and nuns, the Jatakas and more.

9. 9
   Abhidhamma: the first four books अभिधम्मपिटक

   The Dhammasangani classifies states of mind and matter; the Vibhanga analyses them topic by topic; the Dhatukatha relates them to one another; the Puggalapannatti describes types of persons.

10. 10
    Abhidhamma: Kathavatthu, Yamaka, Patthana

    The Kathavatthu answers points of controversy, associated with the third council. The Yamaka works through paired questions. The Patthana, the largest, sets out the twenty-four conditions by which things arise.

Famous verses

बुद्धं सरणं गच्छामि। धम्मं सरणं गच्छामि। सङ्घं सरणं गच्छामि॥

I go to the Buddha for refuge. I go to the Dhamma for refuge. I go to the Sangha for refuge.Khuddakapatha 1 (Saranattaya)

द्वेमे, भिक्खवे, अन्ता पब्बजितेन न सेवितब्बा… एते खो, भिक्खवे, उभो अन्ते अनुपगम्म मज्झिमा पटिपदा तथागतेन अभिसम्बुद्धा॥

Monks, there are two extremes that one who has gone forth should not follow. Avoiding both, the Tathagata awakened to the middle way.Samyutta Nikaya 56.11 (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta)

ये धम्मा हेतुप्पभवा, तेसं हेतुं तथागतो आह; तेसञ्च यो निरोधो, एवंवादी महासमणो॥

Of things that arise from a cause, the Tathagata has told the cause, and also their ending. This is the teaching of the great shramana.Vinaya Pitaka, Mahavagga 1.23.5

हन्द दानि, भिक्खवे, आमन्तयामि वो, वयधम्मा सङ्खारा अप्पमादेन सम्पादेथा॥

Now, monks, I address you: all conditioned things are subject to passing away. Strive on with heedfulness. (The Buddha’s last words.)Digha Nikaya 16 (Mahaparinibbana Sutta) 6.7