The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 43
-also known as the four Agamas or books of textual 'tradition'
-along with the Vinaya or Buddhist monastic rule. These texts
constitute the essential common heritage of Buddhist thought,
and from this perspective the subsequent history of Buddhism
is a working out of their implications. This is not to imply that
Buddhism can somehow be reduced to what is contained in
these texts; one must understand that this 'working out' in prac-
tice constitutes much of what Buddhism has actually been and,
today, is. Nevertheless, in the quest for an: understanding of Bud-
dhist thought these texts represent the most convenient starting
point.
Today we have two full versions of this Nikaya/Agama mat-
erial: a version in Pali forming part of the Pali canon and a ver-
sion in Chinese translation contained in the Chinese Tripitaka.
It is usual scholarly practice to refer to the Pali version by the
term 'Nikaya' and the Chinese by the term 'Agama'. Like the
Pali canon as a whole, it is impossible to date the Pali Nikayas
in their present form with any precision. The Chinese Agamas
were translated into Chinese from Sanskrit or Middle Indo-
Aryan dialects around the end of the fourth century CE, but the
texts upon which they rest must like the Nikayas date from the
centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. Portions of
further versions of this material also come down to us in Tibetan
translation in the Tibetan Kanjur.
The four Nikayas/Agamas arrange the Buddha's discourses
in the first place according to length. The collection of long dis-
courses ( dirghiigama/digha-nikiiya) comprises some thirty siitras
arranged in three volumes; the collection of middle-length dis-
courses (madhyamiigama/majjhima-nikiiya) comprises some 150
siitras in the Pali version and 200 in the Chinese. Finally there
are two collections of shorter siitras. The first of these is 'the
grouped collection' (saf!lyuktiigama/saf!lyutta-nikiiya) which con-
sists of short siitras grouped principally according to subject
matter and dominated by the subjects of dependent arising, the
aggregates, the sense-spheres, and the path. The oral nature of
early Buddhist literature resulted in the proliferation of numbered
lists, in part as mnemonic devices, and the 'numbered collection'