Atthakavagga and Parayanavagga - Dating Parts of The Buddhist Canon

Dating Parts of The Buddhist Canon

We do not have a great deal of information about the earliest phases of Buddhist thought, the form of the religion predating its later codification in the established canons and practices of the Early Buddhist schools and the Mahāyāna.

Some texts, however, have been identified by scholars as being earlier than others; for example, in the Sutta Nipāta, which is a branch of the Khuddhaka Nikāya of the Sutta Piṭaka in the Tipitaka, there are two small collections of suttas, the Aṭṭhakavagga and the Pārāyanavagga, which some scholars regard as being considerably earlier in composition than the bulk of the canon, and as revealing an earlier form of the religion. They are regarded as earlier because of elements of language and composition, their inclusion in very early commentaries, and also because some have seen them as expressing versions of certain Buddhist beliefs that are different from, and perhaps prior to, their later codified versions. In this thinking, the Pārāyanavagga is somewhat closer to the later tradition than the Aṭṭhakavagga. The Khaggavisānasutta (Rhinoceros Sutra), also in the Sutta Nipāta, similarly seems to reveal an earlier mode of Buddhist monasticism, which emphasized individual wandering monastics, more in keeping with the Indian sannyāsin tradition.

In 1994, a group of texts which are the earliest Indian manuscripts discovered were found in Gandhara (see Gandhāran Buddhist Texts). These texts include a relatively complete version of the Rhinoceros Sutra and textual material from the Aṭṭhakavagga and Pārāyanavagga.