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Pali literature
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What language is Pali literature written in?
Pali literature refers to a collection of Buddhist texts written in the Pali language. Pali is an Indo-Aryan language used as the liturgical and scholarly language of Theravada Buddhism. The word pali translates to "line". The Buddha opposed using Sanskrit to teach, encouraging his followers to use vernacular dialects, which led to Pali becoming a standard language.
Pali literature includes the Tipitaka ("Three Baskets"), which contains the Vinaya Pitaka ("Basket of Discipline"), Sutta Pitaka ("Basket of Discourse"), and Abhidhamma Pitaka ("Basket of Special Doctrine").
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Why is Pali literature important to Theravada Buddhism?
Pali literature is important to Theravada Buddhism because it preserves the earliest and most complete collection of Buddhist sacred texts in the Pali language. As the Theravada tradition traces its lineage to the Elders of the early Buddhist community, Pali literature, specifically the Pali Tipitaka ("Three Baskets"), is regarded as the most authoritative source of the Buddha's teachings.
The organization of the Tipitaka highlights the significance that early followers placed on monastic life, the Buddha's discourses, and scholasticism. It consists of the Vinaya Pitaka ("Basket of Discipline"), the Sutta Pitaka ("Basket of Discourse"), and the Abhidhamma Pitaka ("Basket of Special [Further] Doctrine").
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What is the Tipitaka in Pali literature?
The Tipitaka, meaning "Three Baskets" in Pali, is the earliest and most complete collection of Buddhist sacred literature. It highlights the importance that early followers gave to monastic life (Vinaya), the Buddha's discourses (Sutta), and scholasticism (Abhidhamma). The Pali Vinaya Pitaka contains the rules for Theravada monasteries, while the Sutta Pitaka contains collections of the Buddha’s discourses, and the Abhidhamma Pitaka contains central topics in Theravada scholastic thought.
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What are the Jataka tales, and what role do they play in Pali literature?
The Jataka tales are a collection of stories about the Buddha's previous lives that are popular in all branches of Buddhism. A Pali collection contains 547 of these stories.
These tales are scattered throughout the Pali canon, with 35 in the Cariya Pitaka, the last book of the Khuddaka Nikaya. A Sinhalese commentary attributed to Buddhagosa, called the Jatakatthavannana, compiles around 550 Jataka stories. Each tale starts by noting the prompting occasion, ends with the Buddha connecting people from the introductory story with those of the past, and contains a moral. The Jataka stories have been frequently illustrated in sculpture and painting throughout the Buddhist world.
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How did Pali literature spread to other parts of Asia?
Pali literature, a collection of Buddhist texts in the Pali language, spread across Asia along with the expansion of Theravada Buddhism. During the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, the Theravada school established itself in Sri Lanka.
By the beginning of the 2nd millennium CE, the Mahavihara school became dominant in Sri Lanka and spread through mainland Southeast Asia, including Myanmar in the late 11th century, Thailand in the 13th and 14th centuries, and Cambodia and Laos by the end of the 14th century. Pali eventually became a revered, standard, and international tongue. Monasteries in all Buddhist countries served as centers of teaching, learning and outreach.
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Pali literature, body of Buddhist texts in the Pali language.
The word pali (literally, a “line”) came to be used in the sense of “text”—in contrast to atthakatha (“saying what it means”), or “commentary”—at some time during the early part of the 1st millennium ce. Modern scholarship usually follows the Pali tradition itself in describing it in terms of texts and exegeses of the Tipitaka (“Three Baskets”): the Vinaya Pitaka (“Basket of Discipline”), Sutta Pitaka (“Basket of Discourse”), and Abhidhamma Pitaka (“Basket of Special [or Further] Doctrine”). The Vinaya texts contain rules and stories, notably about the occasions on which they were promulgated. The Suttas, which contain both prose and verse, include sermons; stories about the Buddha, monks and nuns, and others contemporary with him as well as about their previous lives as human beings or animals (these incorporating much folklore); and many other things. The Abhidhamma consists almost entirely of scholastic lists of terms and explanations of them describing the body and mind and the nature of the external world.
A specific list of texts organized under these headings came to be seen as a closed canon, the words of the Buddha (Buddhavacana). Commentaries and subcommentaries on them—which contain many narratives, including (for the first time) a complete biography of the Buddha—were attributed by the tradition of the Mahavihara monastic lineage in Sri Lanka (and thence mainland Southeast Asia) to named individuals who are usually dated to the middle of the 1st millennium ce. The most widely known is Buddhaghosa (possibly 4th–5th century), to whom is also assigned the great scholarly compendium Visuddhimagga (“The Path of Purification”), which summarizes and explores morality (sila), meditation (samadhi), and wisdom (prajna). Many texts outside the scheme of canon-plus-commentaries were also written, and there developed a tradition of Pali grammars. Scarcely any work, other than cataloging, has been done to elucidate how genre terms in Pali, particularly those used in titles of individual works or collections (such as those mentioned above, as well as vamsas, histories or chronicles; nitis, axioms of ethics and prudence; sangahas, compendiums; and others), might be related to genre terms used by Western analysis, such as narrative, philosophy, lyric and other poetry, cosmology, didactics, and so on.
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The word pali slowly came to be used as the name of the language of these texts, over a period starting about the 12th century. In reference to this body of material, the word literature must be used in the sense of anything written, rather than in the more specific sense of something with literary merit. But, from the earliest times, many Pali texts have certainly had such merit; indeed, they include some of the earliest examples of the sophisticated artistry known in Sanskrit as kavya (Pali: kabba or kaveyya). The production of texts in Pali continued throughout the 2nd millennium ce; those available in modern, and especially Western, editions might represent most of what was produced in what are now Sri Lanka and Myanmar (Burma), but it is certain that there remains a large number produced in Southeast Asia that are unknown or barely known to modern scholarship.
The Pali language is used by what is now usually called the Theravada (“Way [or Teaching(s)] of the Elders”), but it should be noted that this and related terms, in Pali, refer principally to a monastic lineage or, more rarely, to a set of doctrines differing from those held by other lineages or, loosely, “schools.” The term Theravada, along with the Sanskrit back-formation Sthaviravada, seems to have been used in the familiar general sense first by Western scholars, perhaps no earlier than the 1920s, as an alternative to (their own) “Southern” Buddhism, or Hinayana (“Lesser Vehicle”), a polemical term used by the self-described Mahayanists (those who follow the Mahayana [“Great Vehicle”] tradition, sometimes also called “Northern” Buddhism).