See also:Mainstream Buddhist Schools
COLLETTCOXSCRIPTURE
The word scripture(from the Latin scribere,“to write
or to compose”) is typically used to refer to written
texts, usually the written, foundational texts of a reli-
gious tradition. But few religions had written texts in
their earliest historical period. Instead, those funda-
mental texts were committed to writing only after they
had been transmitted orally, often for several hundreds
of years. Buddhism fits this pattern of development.
According to the tradition, immediately after the death
of the Buddha, MAHAKAS ́YAPA, one of the Buddha’s se-
nior disciples, convened a council of five hundred
ARHATs. At that time, those monks who had heard the
Buddha speak were said to have recited all of the Bud-
dha’s discourses from memory, and specific monks
were then charged with the responsibility of transmit-
ting specific discourses verbatim to their students. Ac-
cording to traditional historical accounts, this is the
way in which Buddhist scripture was preserved in the
earliest period. Whether this narrative represents his-
torical fact or whether it is an attempt on the part of
the tradition to legitimize the authenticity of its scrip-
tures by tracing them back to the original source in an
unbroken lineage is, of course, uncertain. However, it
would appear that in India monks did orally transmit
texts attributed to the Buddha from master to disciple
in distinct lineages over several hundreds of years. This
continued to be the case even after these oral texts were
finally committed to writing and compiled into, for ex-
ample, the Pali Buddhist CANONsometime in the first
century B.C.E. The fourth century C.E. scholar monk
VASUBANDHUspeaks of such oral lineages of trans-
mission (and of their corruption) in his important text,
the Vyakhyayukti(Science of Exegesis).
What are the Buddhist scriptures? The simple an-
swer is that scriptures are texts that have the status of
being considered BUDDHAVACANA(WORD OF THEBUD-
DHA). Sutras are paradigmatic examples of scriptures.
A sutra (literally “thread,” “measuring line,” or “stan-
dard,” from the Sanskrit root sutr,“to string together,”
“to compose”) in its most general sense is a discourse
of a buddha. However, the category of scripture is ac-
tually much broader than that of sutra. Thus, while all
sutras are scripture, not all scriptures are sutras (see
below). Scriptures are often distinguished from s ́astras,
which are works, usually of a more synthetic and com-
mentarial nature, that are based on, in the sense of be-
ing second-order expositions of, scriptural material.
Not all scriptures are considered to be the word of the
historical Buddha S ́akyamuni, since there are some
scriptures that are said to be spoken by other buddhas.
Moreover, not everything that is spoken by a buddha
is considered to be scripture. For example, the Tibetan
tradition generally considers the works attributed to
MAITREYA, the future Buddha, to be s ́astras,and not
sutras. What is more, it is often the case that a work
that is not a scripture may have a more exalted status,
playing a more pivotal role in a particular Buddhist
tradition than do actual scriptures. Take once again the
works of Maitreya, or those of NAGARJUNA(ca. second
century C.E.), which, despite their status as s ́astras,are
immensely important for much of the later Indian,
Chinese, and Tibetan traditions. All of this is to say
that there is a certain arbitrariness concerning what is
and what is not a Buddhist scripture, and that in the
end a “scripture” may be no more and no less than
what a specific Buddhist community considers to fall
within the purview of that category.Scriptures and canons
By comparison to the Torah, Bible, and Qur’an, the
set of texts that comprise the Buddhist scriptural
canon is mammoth. The Pali canon, for example, con-
sists of over forty large volumes, and the scriptural
portions of the Chinese and Tibetan canons are over
twice that size. Given the heterogeneous nature of
Buddhism, moreover, different Buddhist schools have
different collections of texts that they consider to be
the Buddha’s word. For example, the Theravada tra-
dition of Southeast Asia generally considers only those
works contained in the Pali canon (tipitaka) to be the
Buddha’s word. The tipitaka,or “three baskets,” con-
sists of the sutta(Sanskrit, sutra), the VINAYA, and the
abhidhamma (Sanskrit, ABHIDHARMA). The suttabas-
ket, although the most thematically heterogeneous
collection in so far as it deals with a wide range of sub-
jects, is nonetheless relatively coherent in terms of
style. A suttaor sutra is a discourse or sermon usually
on a specific topic delivered by the Buddha at a par-
ticular time, in a particular location, and to a specific
audience. All of these—time, place, and audience—are
identified in the preamble of a sutra. Sutras also tend
to begin characteristically with the opening line, “Thus
have I heard,” signaling once again the oral/aural na-
ture of the original transmission of scripture. The
vinaya basket is more thematically coherent in so farSCRIPTURE