Talk:Buddhist texts

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Good show. - NYK 14:24, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. Feel free to pitch in, it ain't done yet! mahābāla 15:27, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] i was wondering if this should be included.

Buddhism: "Do not go by revelation or tradition, do not go by rumor, or the sacred scriptures, do not go by hearsay or mere logic, do not go by bias towards a notion or by another person's seeming ability and do not go by the idea 'He is our teacher'. But when you yourself know that a thing is good, that it is not blamable, that it is praised by the wise and when practiced and observed that it leads to happiness, then follow that thing."

it was one of buddha's teachings as well

I just noticed that there was a pre-existing Mahayana Sutras page, started a while back by that guy acmuller. I tried to clean up the format a little, but maybe it should just be merged into this article. - NYK 17:30, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If there are no objections I think I'll just rediect to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_texts#Mahayana_texts Buddhist Texts : Mahayana texts section. acmuller was great, wonder what ever happened to him? You can still see external links to his dictionary everywhere - although I tend to delete them. mahābāla 13:17, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You might like to reinstate links for Chuck's dictionary since it is now the on-line combined classical and Buddhist CJKV dictionary. It provides a major research tool with high standard entries provided by real scholars.--Stephen Hodge 01:00, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No discussion yet of the British Library manuscripts? I'm not competent to discuss them, but I mentioned their existence at Gandhara.Wetman 04:59, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

so feel free to add something. Where would they fit do you think? I'm aware that I've only covered the really mainstream stuff here - the Vajrayana section is quite weak, and there are many more non-canonical texts and genres which could well be included. mahābāla 09:42, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Unless there are objections, I will go through and change all the "Early Wisdom Schools" references to the new "Nikaya" so that it can be standard across the wikipedia. I think the latter is preferable since it include Theravada which, far from being "early", is still in existence - Nat Krause 11:58, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I changed "Arising of Faith" to "Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana" and created a new article for that treatise (later discovering there already was/is an "Awakening of Mahayana Faith"). Before we merge, can we get some consensus on "Arising" or "Awakening"? As I detail on Talk:Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, the Chinese character in question does translate to "arising", not awakening, but all the translations are "Awakening of Faith..." and I see no precedent (except Wikipedia and common sense) for "Arising of Faith". I also see no precedent (except A. C. Muller's Web site) for "Mahayana Faith". In contrast, I do see some precedent (namely, Whalen Lai, who was presumably peer-reviewed) for "Mahayana Treatise". --Munge 07:38, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)


There is this statement in the article: "The only complete Mahayana Canon surviving is in Chinese translation, though it was originally in Sanskrit". There are three problems with this: 1) In contrast to the Agamas / Nikayas, there was never a Mahayana canon in the normal sense of that word; 2) most Mahayana sutras translated into Chinese were also translated into Tibetan, while there are Tibetan translations that have no counterparts in the Chinese collection; and 3) some portions of the Mahayana collection of sutras may have been written in Prakrit. One might also like to specify that Mahayana texts that survive in Indic mss are composed in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.--Stephen Hodge 00:57, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)


There is the statement: "This doctrine was later taken up by the Mahayana in a modified form as Vasubandu's Ten Stages Sutra". The Da`sabhuumika-suutra forms part of the Avatamsaka collection and thus was not "Vasubandhu's". It is also possible that Da`sabhuumika version is independent, though paralleling, from the the Mahavastu version.--Stephen Hodge 01:06, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tripitaka

The section on the Nikaya Canon is seriously flawed here. The organization is confusing, and it does not make clear that there is an existing Theravada Canon (the Tipitaka) that is highly organized. It's just unclear. In fact this extends to the Mahayana section too. At present, this is really just a list of texts. It doesn't make it clear that there are groupings of them. ---PhifeAlQuest

[edit] Question

Are the Sanskrit versions of the Indian sutras extant or are they now lost? If not, why is it that major English translations of the sutras are made by Chinese scholars like Burton Watson and Red Pine? Mandel June 30, 2005 17:17 (UTC)

Presumably the original Sanskrit, Pali and so on versions were all translated into Chinese (and, presumably, some lost except in Chinese), whereas later ones written in other languages would not be understood by a Sanskrit scholar. elvenscout742 21:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Just wondering, can anyone point me to a list of texts in chronological order, the historical order in which they were written? Roy Brumback 11:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't do that, but I can question whether such a list would be possible. Surely, even if such a thing could exist, it would be so loaded with relatively obscure "canon" that It would be near useless. elvenscout742 21:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if it would be useless, one can easily only read the texts one wants to, but certainly one text was written first, then another, ect...Roy Brumback
And then another, and another, until you have however many thousand volumes that there are today. And I'm pretty sure the ages of a great many are very uncertain. elvenscout742 10:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem here is a reasonable person would like to know where to "start"... And I don't think it unreasonable to ask for a chronology, so long as it focuses on the earliest extant texts. It is frustrating for myself. I have read the Old & New Testemant, then the Nag Hammadi texts (that are published). Then I read the Koran. This is the family tree of Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheism; certainly other commentaries have been written inspired by these very books, but these later texts are of a contemporary nature and not historical, as the aforementioned are.

Having read some of the primary texts (abridged) of Hindu literature. I want to know where one would should start with Buddhism.

If Wikipedia is reliant upon sources, we wish to know upon what sources (of those earliest extant written sources) do the authorities of Buddhism (priest or scholarly) rely upon for their authority to guide the laiety or even construct a page on "Buddhist Texts"?

I can see how others are frustrated, and looking at this page, I find, not suprisingly, that I was not alone.

The response that there is no canon to Buddhism is not an honest answer; for if that is the case, then: NO SCRIPTURES SHOULD BE ALLUDED TO AT ALL. But if there is, then we have ourselves a canon. And we need not compile a 3000 year bibliography.

This is why I say this: by roughly what era did the society of Buddhism first acquire the philosophy and practices, and lifestyle which made their society homogeneous and distinct? We know this is nothing recent; thus, no contemporary sources or text need be included. We know that the Buddha way has been around for at least a 1000 years and no doubt even longer. But I only make this a conservative estimate of a 1000 years. If one wishes to make the cut off at 800 A.D. or 600 A.D., that's even better.

As far as the varying Buddha schools are concerned; that they differ should not deter one from asking, from what root(s) do these varying schools spring? And what are the primary sources? To afix a date by these most often referred text is no daunting task; you already mention some already. We ask that you afix the date; or, perhaps arrange in a separate column this very system. Once, again, this page is, after all, on "Buddhist Texts"...

Otherwise, how is a lay person ever to explore the doctrine of Buddhism? But if a person can do this -- only by joining a Buddhist Order, this would be as ridiculous as saying one cannot understand or even make a critique or evaluation of Islam without becoming a practitioner of Islam.

That's the gist of the poblem here.

Thank You. 71.109.178.91 (talk) 21:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Canon

This article makes a distinction between canonical and noncanonical, which is not followed in other articles: though the article Pali Canon covers only canonical material, those on Tibetan Buddhist canon and Chinese Buddhist Canon cover noncanonical material as well. See my note on the talk page of the latter. Peter jackson 15:52, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I suppose it depends how you define canonical. OED, inter alia, has "authoritative, standard, accepted". In the case of the Tibetan kanjur / Tenjur, the works included are ipso facto canonical. You may not know much about the compilation of the Tibetan canon, but all the texts included did undergo scrutiny over menay centuries, beginning especially with the redactional work of Buton. The Chinese Canon is a bit more flexible and the matter is confused somewhat by the range of material included in Taisho. But there is no reason to query the overall canonicity of these texts -- the Chinese Canon per se (not in nits Taisho incarnation) also underwent considerable scrutiny, with mahy texts excluded precisely because they were not deemed to be canonical. Or am I missing some arcane point you are trying to make ?--Stephen Hodge 22:36, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
The point I was trying to make was about inconsistency. Firstly, between articles, in that this article uses the same concept of canonicity as the Pali Canon article, while the Chinese & Tibetan ones use a different one. Secondly, that the standard listing of "Buddhist scriptures" found in the appendices of quite a few books (in nearly identical terms, presumably copied from a common source) has no obvious consistent concept of canonicity. Certainly there's a sense in which one can say the Tenjur is canonical. But then why not the Pali commentaries (and subcommentaries)? Peter jackson 15:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

As the term "canonical" is used in such inconsistent ways I've deleted it in favour of Buddhavacana, which at least has a fairly definite meaning. Probably quite a lot of articles need to be sorted out similarly. Peter jackson (talk) 11:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] new sutra images

Your page needed a few images, thus I choose two examples of early Sutra printing. Daiku Burusu, Japan

[edit] take out this link

http://www.dharmanet.org/files.html Doesn't work. 4.249.198.57 (talk) 01:15, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Akashic Records

I've deleted th ereference to these, as the article on them says they're a Hindu idea adopted by theosophists, ie nothing to do with Tibetan Buddhism. Peter jackson (talk) 11:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)