An open library of thought
Understand suffering in order to be free of it.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
These records present three texts of the Pali canon traditionally linked to the Buddha’s teaching and compiled by his community. The four main Nikāyas, the monastic Vinaya, the parallel Āgamas preserved in Chinese, fragments in Gandhari and Sanskrit, and later Mahāyāna sūtras are not indexed; this is a selection, not a complete bibliography.
01c. 3rd–1st century BCE
The text belongs to the Khuddaka Nikāya of the Pali canon, written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE; parallel collections survive in Gandhari, Sanskrit and Chinese. Attribution to the Buddha is traditional: communities compiled and transmitted the verses, and a later commentary attached a story to each.
02c. 5th–1st century BCE
Preserved in the Saṃyutta Nikāya and in the monastic Vinaya, with parallels in other early schools, the discourse reached written form centuries after the events it narrates. Its closing scene, in which Koṇḍañña gains the eye of the Dhamma, belongs to the community’s memory of its own beginnings.
03c. 5th–1st century BCE
Part of the Khuddaka Nikāya, its five chapters include the Aṭṭhakavagga and the Pārāyanavagga, often regarded as early because other canonical texts quote them and an ancient commentary, the Niddesa, explains them. A Chinese translation of an Aṭṭhakavagga parallel also survives.