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Buddhist texts can be categorized in a number of ways. The Western terms "scripture" and "canonical" are applied to Buddhism in inconsistent ways by Western scholars: for example, one authority refers to "scriptures and other canonical texts", while another says that scriptures can be categorized into canonical, commentarial, and pseudo-canonical.
The Pāḷi Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. [1] It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. [2] [3] It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school. [4]
The earliest Buddhist texts were orally composed and transmitted in Middle Indo-Aryan dialects called Prakrits. [8] [9] [10] Various parallel passages in the Buddhist Vinayas state that when asked to put the sutras into chandasas the Buddha refused and instead said the teachings could be transmitted in sakāya niruttiyā (Skt. svakā niruktiḥ).
Pali died out as a literary language in mainland India in the fourteenth century but survived elsewhere until the eighteenth. [34] Today Pali is studied mainly to gain access to Buddhist scriptures, and is frequently chanted in a ritual context.
The Nepalese Buddhist textual tradition is a unique collection of Buddhist texts preserved primarily in Nepal, particularly within the Newar Buddhist community of the Kathmandu Valley. [55] It is distinct for its emphasis on preserving the Sanskrit originals of many Mahayana and Vajrayana scriptures, which have otherwise been lost in India and ...
The Mahāyāna sūtras are a broad genre of Buddhist scripture that are accepted as canonical and as buddhavacana ("Buddha word") in certain communities of Mahāyāna Buddhism. They are largely preserved in Sanskrit manuscripts, and translations in the Tibetan Buddhist canon and Chinese Buddhist canon .
The Dhammapada (Pali: धम्मपद; Sanskrit: धर्मपद, romanized: Dharmapada) is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. [1] The original version of the Dhammapada is in the Khuddaka Nikaya, a division of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism.
Pali literature is concerned mainly with Theravada Buddhism, of which Pali (IAST: pāl̤i) is the traditional language. The earliest and most important Pali literature constitutes the Pāli Canon, the authoritative scriptures of Theravada school.