TIPITAKA

( (Pali: Triple Basket), ) Sanskrit Tripitaka, the total canon of the southern schools of Buddhism, somewhat pejoratively dubbed Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) by the self-styled Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) schools; for the latter, the canon constitutes a preliminary body of teachings, analogous to the Old Testament in Christianity. The books of this southern canon were nearly all written in India within 500 years of the time of the Buddha (between about 500 BC and the beginning of the Christian Era). They appeared in two languagesin Pali within the Theravada (Way of the Elders) school, which now predominates in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Southeast Asia, and in Sanskrit among the Sarvastivada (Doctrine That All Is Real), Mahasanghika (Great Community), and other schools that did not survive the demise of Buddhism in India. The Pali texts constitute the entire surviving body of literature in that language. Each school had its own canonical collection that differed somewhat from others in the contents of particular texts, which texts it included, and the ordering of texts within the canon. There was more agreement on the first two sections, the Vinaya Pitaka (Sanskrit and Pali: Basket of Discipline) and the Sutta Pitaka (Pali: Basket of Discourse; Sanskrit: Sutra Pitaka) than on the third, the Abhidhamma Pitaka (Pali: Basket of Special [or Further] Doctrine; Sanskrit: Abhidharma Pitaka). The first of the three, which is also the earliest and smallest, provides for the regulation of monastic life. The second and largest contains the Hinayana-sutta (Sanskrit: sutra) literaturei.e., sermons and doctrinal and ethical discourses attributed to the Buddha or, in a few cases, to his disciples. (The basic texts produced by Mahayana schools are also called sutras and are often considered to have been revealed by the Buddha after he had passed into Nirvana.) The Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma) Pitaka, which was apparently accepted only by the Sarvastivadins and the Theravadinsand in two quite different formsis basically a schematization of doctrinal material from the suttas. All three sections of the canon contain, as well, an abundance of legends and other narratives.