The Word of Buddha: Scriptures and Schools 45
also recognized as having the authority of the Buddha's word.
This fifth collection included such works as the Dharmapada
('sayings on Dharma') and the Jiitaka or stories concerning the
previous lives of the Buddha. The four Nikayas together with agreater or lesser number of miscellaneous minor texts constituted
'the basket of discourses' (Siitra/Sutta Pitaka) for the earliest
Buddhist schools.BThe Pali canon, Chinese Tripitaka, and Tibetan Kanjur all
preserve versions of the ancient 'basket of monastic discipline'
(Vinaya Pitaka ): the Pali canon and Kanjur one each, the Chinese
Tripitaka four, plus an incomplete-fifth. All six extant versions
of the Vinaya fall into two basic parts. The first is a detailed
analysis of the rules which constitute the priitimok:ja (Pali
pii{imokkha) and which govern the life of the individual monk
or nun. The second comprises twenty 'sections' (skandhaka/
khandhaka) which set out the proper procedures for conducting
the various communal acts of the Sangha, such as ordination (see
Chapter 4).^14
Sutra and Abhidharma: the problem of textual authenticity
The Nikayas/Agamas are collections of siitras or 'discourses'
regarded as delivered by the Buddha. The older term for a dis-
course of the Buddha preserved in Pali is sutta. It is not clear
what this term originally meant. When Buddhists started sans-
kritizing their texts they chose the word siitra. This is a term
which literally means 'thread' (compare English 'suture') but in
a literary context refers especially to authoritative brahmanical
texts consisting of a string of terse, aphoristic verses which a
pupil might memorize and a teacher might take as the basis for
exposition. Buddhist siitras, however, are not in this form. As
Richard Gombrich has pointed out, it is perhaps more likely that
Middle Indo-Aryan sutta corresponds to Sanskrit siikta, which
means 'something that is well said' and was early in the history
of Indian literature used to refer to the inspired hymns of the
Vedic seers that make up the collection of the ~g Veda. Early