Buddhist texts
[8] In an effort to preserve these scriptures, Asian Buddhist institutions were at the forefront of the adoption of Chinese technologies related to bookmaking, including paper, and block printing which were often deployed on a large scale.Buddhavacana texts have special status as sacred scripture and are generally seen as in accord with the teachings of the historical Buddha, which is termed "the Dharma".[10] According to early Buddhist sources like the Mahāpadesasutta, a text said by someone other than the Buddha may be certified as true buddhavacana by four "great references to authority" (mahāpadeśa): (1) the buddha himself (who often certified the statements of others as buddhavacana in the sutras), (2) a sangha of wise elders, (3) a small group of specialist monks (dharmadharas or vinayadharas), or (4) one elder knowledgeable in the Dharma.Generally speaking, the Theravāda school rejects the Mahāyāna sūtras as buddhavacana (word of the Buddha), and do not study or see these texts as reliable sources.This collection, unlike the Pāli Tripiṭaka, contains Mahāyāna sūtras, Śāstras (scholastic treatises), and Esoteric Buddhist literature.There are different genres of early Buddhist texts, including prose "suttas" (Sanskrit: sūtra, discourses), disciplinary works (Vinaya), various forms of verse compositions (such as gāthā and udāna), mixed prose and verse works (geya), and also lists (matika) of monastic rules or doctrinal topics.[29] Another important source for Mahāsāṃghika sutras is the Mahāvastu ("Great Event"), which is a collection of various texts compiled into a biography of the Buddha.[36] It is an attempt to best express the Buddhist view of "ultimate reality" (paramartha-satya) without using the conventional language and narrative stories found in the sutras.[37] The prominent modern scholar of Abhidharma, Erich Frauwallner has said that these Buddhist systems are "among the major achievements of the classical period of Indian philosophy."[40] Scholars like Erich Frauwallner have argued that there is an "ancient core" of early pre-sectarian material in the earliest Abhidharma works, such as in the Theravada Vibhanga, the Dharmaskandha of the Sarvastivada, and the Śāriputrābhidharma of the Dharmaguptaka school.One of the largest category of texts that were neither Sutra, Vinaya nor Abhidharma includes various collections of stories such as the Jātaka tales and the Avadānas (Pali: Apadāna).[46] Buddhist poetry is a broad genre with numerous forms and has been composed in many languages, including Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese.Buddhaghosa was also the author of the Visuddhimagga, or Path of Purification, which is a manual of doctrine and practice according to the Mahavihara tradition of Sri Lanka.Sri Lankan literature in the vernacular contains many Buddhist works, including as classical Sinhala poems such as the Muvadevāvata (The Story of the Bodhisattva's Birth as King Mukhadeva, 12th century) and the Sasadāvata (The Story of the Bodhisattva's Birth as a Hare, 12th century) as well as prose works like the Dhampiyātuvā gätapadaya (Commentary on the Blessed Doctrine), a commentary on words and phrases in the Pāli Dhammapada.The Theravāda textual tradition spread into Burma and Thailand where Pali scholarship continued to flourish with such works as the Aggavamsa of Saddaniti and the Jinakalamali of Ratanapañña.According to David Drewes, it seems to have been "primarily a textual movement, focused on the revelation, preaching, and dissemination of Mahāyāna sutras, that developed within, and never really departed from, traditional Buddhist social and institutional structures.Mahāyāna Buddhists explained the emergence of these new texts by arguing that they had been transmitted in secret, via lineages of supernatural beings (such as the nagas) until people were ready to hear them, or by stating that they had been revealed directly through visions and meditative experiences to a select few.[59] According to David McMahan, the literary style of the Mahāyāna sūtras reveals how these texts were mainly composed as written works and how they also needed to legitimate themselves to other Buddhists.[55] These texts also promoted new religious practices that were supposed to make Buddhahood easy to achieve, such as "hearing the names of certain Buddhas or bodhisattvas, maintaining Buddhist precepts, and listening to, memorizing, and copying sutras."Some Mahāyāna sūtras claim that these practices lead to rebirth in Pure lands such as Abhirati and Sukhavati, where becoming a Buddha is much easier to achieve.Mahāyāna texts see Buddhas (and to a lesser extent, certain bodhisattvas as well) as transcendental or supramundane (lokuttara) beings, who live for eons constantly helping others through their activity.[70] One of them, the Atanatiya Sutra, is also included in the Mikkyo (esoteric) division of the standard modern collected edition of Sino-Japanese Buddhist literature.Another very influential work which traditionally attributed to Nagarjuna In East Asia is the Dà zhìdù lùn (*Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa, The Great Discourse on Prajñāpāramitā).[73] The Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra (fourth century CE) is another very large treatise which focuses on yogic praxis and the doctrines of the Indian Yogacara school.The works of Asanga, a great scholar and systematizer of the Yogacara, are also very influential in both traditions, including his magnum opus, the Mahāyāna-samgraha, and the Abhidharma-samuccaya (a compendium of Abhidharma thought that became the standard text for many Mahayana schools especially in Tibet).Various texts are also said to have received by Asanga from the Bodhisattva Maitreya in the Tushita god realm, including works such as Madhyāntavibhāga, the Mahāyāna-sūtrālamkāra, and the Abhisamayālamkara.[74] Asanga's brother Vasubandhu wrote a large number of texts associated with the Yogacara including: Trisvabhāva-nirdesa, Vimsatika, Trimsika, and the Abhidharmakośa-bhāsya.The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (Dàshéng Qǐxìn Lùn) is an influential text in East Asian Buddhism, especially in the Hua-yen school of China, and its Japanese equivalent, Kegon.Still intact in good condition after some 750 years, it has been described by the UNESCO committee as "one of the most important and most complete corpus of Buddhist doctrinal texts in the world".The late Seventh century saw the rise of another new class of Buddhist texts, the Tantras, which focused on ritual practices and yogic techniques such as the use of Mantras, Dharanis, Mandalas, Mudras and Fire offerings.
palm-leaf pagesBodhisattvaBrahmā SahampatiDharmaBuddha's awakeningLotus SūtraAṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā SūtraShadakshari Lokesvarareligious textsBuddhismits traditionsBuddhist CanonsPāli CanonTheravāda traditionChinese Buddhist CanonEast Asian Buddhist traditionTibetan Buddhist CanonIndo-Tibetan BuddhismGautama BuddhaGandhāran Buddhist textsPakistanGāndhārīfirst Buddhist textsBuddhist monasticsmanuscriptsIndo-Aryan languagesBuddhist Hybrid SanskritChineseClassical TibetanBuddhism spread outside of IndiabuddhavacanaBuddhasutrasshastrasAbhidharmawriting systemsprintingsutra copyingbookmakingblock printingprinted textDiamond SutraGuanyinhistorical BuddhaDonald LopezMahāsāṃghikaMūlasarvāstivādaṛṣissanghasūtrasVinayaTripiṭakaMahāyāna sūtrasEast Asian BuddhismTaishō TripiṭakaTripiṭaka KoreanaEsoteric Buddhist literatureHsuan HuaChinese BuddhismKangyurVajrayāna BuddhismBuddhist tantrasEarly Buddhist textsPrakritsGāndhārī languageMagadhanSri LankaSarvāstivādaDharmaguptakaMahāsāṅghikaMahīśāsakaNikayasĀgamaspre-sectarian BuddhismBuddhist studiesRichard GombrichA. K. WarderMahāyāna BuddhismHinayanaŚrāvakayānaearly Buddhist schoolsGandharan Buddhist TextsGandharan BuddhismsuttasSanskritgāthāudānaNikāyasSthavira nikayaŚālistamba Sūtradependent originationmiddle wayfive aggregatesthree unwholesome rootsFour Noble TruthsNoble Eightfold PathMahāvastuDharmacakrapravartanaVinayasJatakasMula-SarvāstivādaMahāsānghikaKhuddaka NikāyaDhammapadaUdānavargaItivuttakaXuanzangSutta NipataAṭṭhakavagga and PārāyanavaggaTheragāthāTherīgāthāparamartha-satyaErich FrauwallnerIndian philosophyAbhidhamma Pitakafactors leading to AwakeningTheravadaVibhangaDharmaskandhaSarvastivadaTheravāda AbhidhammaSarvastivada AbhidharmaŚāriputrābhidharmaTattvasiddhi ŚāstraPudgalavadaśāstra