The big idea: The Theravada scriptures are the Pali Canon, also called the Tipitaka or Tripitaka: literally three baskets.
The name is the structure, and the structure is the answer to most questions on this theme.
Three baskets: the rule, the discourses, and the analysis. The name is the structure.
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How the canon was formed
The First Council
Soon after the Buddha's death, tradition says, 500 arahants met at Rajagaha. Upali recited the Vinaya and Ananda the discourses.
Kept by memory
For centuries monks learned it by heart. Groups of reciters (bhanakas) each kept one collection and chanted together to check it.
Written down
In Sri Lanka in the first century BCE, the chronicles say, monks wrote it down at the Aluvihara, fearing famine and war would break the chain.
Checked again
Buddhaghosa wrote commentaries in the fifth century. Councils at Mandalay (1871) and Yangon (1954–56) re-recited the whole canon.
Recited, remembered, written, checked.
Inside the Sutta Pitaka, and how it is used: Five collections (nikayas): long, middle-length, connected and numbered discourses, and a minor collection holding the Dhammapada and the Jataka tales.
In the raft simile the Buddha compares his teaching to a raft: used to cross the river, then left behind.
Who the Buddha is here: The guide names him in this section: Siddhartha Gotama, also called Sakyamuni — "sage of the Shakya clan".
Use the name the branch uses. Theravada texts say Gotama; Sanskrit sources say Gautama.
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Mahayana Buddhism has the Pali Canon's material and a great deal besides. The guide's summary is that its scriptures focus on the many Buddhas.
What the guide names
- Prajnaparamita literature — the perfection of wisdom texts, including the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra
- The Sukhavati Sutras, describing the Pure Lands
- The Lotus Sutra, which describes the Pure Lands in which the Buddhas reside
- For Vajrayana: the tantras
- For development: shastras and agamas
What three sutras teach
Lotus Sutra
Skilful means: the Buddha fits his teaching to each hearer. The burning-house parable shows the three paths are really one vehicle.
Heart Sutra
Avalokiteshvara tells Shariputra that form is emptiness, emptiness is form. It is short, so many temples chant it daily.
Sukhavati Sutras
The monk Dharmakara vows to become Amitabha Buddha and receive all who call on him in his Pure Land.
Theravada on the texts
- The Pali Canon was passed orally from the Buddha to the five arahants — his original followers, now enlightened persons — and then to the monastic order
- That chain of transmission is what gives it authority
- Scriptural knowledge and panna (wisdom) are important pursuits
Mahayana on the texts
- Accepts that the Pali Canon was recited by the arhats
- But holds that other scriptures are attributed to the bodhisattvas
- And that all of them are the words of the Buddha
- So the disagreement is about the boundary of the canon, not about the Pali Canon's authenticity
This is the sharpest textual disagreement in the unit: Mahayana Buddhists do not reject the Pali Canon. They add to it, and justify the addition by a different account of what counts as the Buddha's word.
Saying that — rather than "they have different texts" — is the difference between a connection identified and a connection developed.
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The guide's own phrasing: "Two languages, Pali and Sanskrit, represent different interpretations."
Why the language matters: Not two spellings of the same thing — the guide says the languages represent the interpretations. Using the right one for the branch you are discussing is therefore a doctrinal point, not a cosmetic one.
| Pali — Theravada | Sanskrit — Mahayana | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| dukkha | duhkha | Suffering, or better, unsatisfactoriness |
| tanha | trishna | Craving |
| anicca | anitya | Change: nothing stays as it is |
| anatta | anatman | No permanent self |
| nibbana | nirvana | Enlightenment: craving extinguished |
| dhamma | dharma | The teaching, and the truth |
| kamma | karma | Action leading to a state of rebirth |
| arahant | arhat | An enlightened person |
| panna | prajna | Wisdom |
| bodhisatta | bodhisattva | One who seeks enlightenment for all beings |
Agamas, shastras, tantras: the guide's three words
- Agamas: early discourse collections kept in Chinese, close parallels of the Pali nikayas
- Shastras: treatises by later teachers explaining the sutras, such as Nagarjuna's verses on the middle way
- Tantras: Vajrayana ritual and meditation texts, practised only after initiation by a lama
- The Chinese canon and the Tibetan Kangyur (the Buddha's word) and Tengyur (treatises) hold all of these in translation
Where only one word exists: The guide notes that where only one word is given, the spelling is the same in both languages — samsara, maya, sangha, karuna, sila, bhavana, upaya.
Those are safe to use anywhere.
How this is tested. Theme 2's key questions are what gives authority to different texts and who can interpret sacred texts, and why. Buddhism answers both through transmission.
Compare and contrast the sacred texts of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism.
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