The Sutta Pitaka is the second of three divisions of Theravada Buddhism's Tripitaka or Pali Canon, a Pali collection of Buddhist writings. The Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidharma Pitaka are the other two parts of the Tripitaka. The Sutta Pitaka, also known as the Buddha's words or the Buddha's words, contains over 10,000 suttas (teachings) attributed to the Buddha or his close companions. This article will explain to you the Sutta Pitaka which will be helpful in Ancient History preparation for the UPSC Civil service exam.

Sutta Pitaka

• The Sutta Pitaka, Tipitaka's second division, contains over 10,000 suttas (discourses) delivered by the Buddha and his close disciples during and shortly after the Buddha's forty-five-year teaching career, as well as many additional verses by other Sangha members.
• Sutta Pitaka, is an extensive body of texts constituting the basic doctrinal section of the Buddhist canon—properly speaking, the canon of the so-called Hinayana doctrinal schools, which include the Theravada form of Buddhism prevalent in modern-day Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.
• The sutta Pitaka includes stories about or ostensibly by other important figures from early Buddhism, as well as narratives about or discourses by the Buddha.
• With a few exceptions, the Sutta Pitaka's contents are attributed to Gautama Buddha himself.
• The Pali texts of the Theravada school are divided into roughly comparable collections called Nikayas.

Sutta Pitaka - Early Developments

• At the first Buddhist council, held shortly after the Buddha's death, Buddha's cousin Ananda orally rehearsed the Sutta Pitaka for the first time.
• The first council also established the Vinaya, or set of rules, that governed monks and nuns' lives within the monastic community.
• Following this, little is said to have been added to the Canon. Scholars are more sceptical, though their levels of scepticism differ.
• Only short prose passages or verses expressing important doctrines were collected at the First Council, and these were expanded into full-length suttas over the next century.

Sutta Pitaka Nikayas

• The suttas are divided into five categories, or nikayas.
  • Digha Nikaya
  • Majjhima Nikaya
  • Samyutta Nikaya
  • Anguttara Nikaya
  • Khuddaka Nikaya

Digha Nikaya

• The "Long" Discourses are made up of 34 suttas, including the Canon's longest.
• These suttas cover a wide range of topics, from colourful folkloric accounts of deva world beings to down-to-earth practical meditation instructions, and everything in between.
• It's possible that the Digha Nikaya was written "for the purpose of propaganda, in order to attract converts to the new religion."

Majjhima Nikaya

• The "Middle-length" Discourses are made up of 152 suttas that range in length.
• These include some of the Canon's most profound and difficult suttas, as well as engaging stories rich in human pathos and drama that illustrate key principles of the law of kamma.

Samyutta Nikaya

• The Samyutta Nikaya is a Buddhist scripture from the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the "three baskets" that make up Theravada Buddhism's Pali Tipitaka.
• It is the third of five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka
• The "Grouped" Discourses are made up of 2,889 relatively short suttas organised into 56 samyuttas by theme.

Anguttara Nikaya

• The "Further-factored" Discourses are made up of thousands of short suttas that are divided into eleven nipatas based on the number of Dhamma items covered in each sutta.
• The Eka-nipata ("Book of the Ones"), for example, contains suttas about a single Dhamma item, while the Duka-nipata ("Book of the Twos") contains suttas about two Dhamma items, and so on.

Khuddaka Nikaya

• The Khuddaka Nikaya is the last of the five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, one of the "three baskets" that make up Theravada Buddhism's scriptures, the Pali Tipitaka.
• There are fifteen books in the "Division of Short Books" (eighteen in the Burmese edition).

Sutta Pitaka - Significance

• According to the Theravada tradition, the sutta literature is the backbone of the dhamma, or Buddha's teachings, and is the second section of the Tipitaka, a three-part collection of Pali canonical texts.
• Early Buddhist schools used the same divisions, known as gamas, in their versions of this piaka, and some examples have been discovered in Central Asian Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts, as well as Chinese and Tibetan translations.
• The only complete Sutta Pitaka currently known is in Pali, and the texts that made up this collection were written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE.
• The suttas are the middle pitaka, or section (literally, "basket"), of the Pali canon, and they make up the majority of the texts that Buddhists are familiar with.
• In fact, they are frequently referred to as the dhamma or "teachings," especially in the early period, and are thus in opposition to the Vinaya texts, which focus on rules for monks and nuns.
• Many metrical verses are interspersed throughout the majority of prose passages, indicating that the suttas are divided into strata, with shorter metrical texts like the Sutta-nipata and the Dhammapada being among the oldest.

Conclusion

The Sutta Pitaka is the second of Theravada Buddhism's three Tripitaka or Pali Canon divisions, a Pali collection of Buddhist writings. The sutta Pitaka contains narratives about or discourses by the Buddha, as well as stories about or ostensibly by other important figures from early Buddhism. The sutta literature is the backbone of the dhamma, or Buddha's teachings, according to the Theravada tradition, and is the second section of the Tipitaka, a three-part collection of Pali canonical texts.