Pali Canon

Language and composition

The canon is in Pali, a Middle Indo-Aryan language close to but not identical with any single spoken dialect, and probably a literary language formed from several. The tradition holds it to be the language the Buddha spoke; scholars generally treat it as a somewhat later composite, related to but distinct from the dialect of Magadha.

Its three divisions are the Vinaya, the discourses and the Abhidhamma. The discourse collections are arranged by length — long, middle-length, connected and numerical — with a fifth miscellaneous collection containing the Dhammapada, the Jataka verses, the Sutta Nipata and other well-known works.

Transmission

The material was preserved orally for some four centuries by specialised reciters, and was committed to writing in Sri Lanka, traditionally at Aluvihara in the first century BCE, during a period of famine and instability that threatened the reciting lineages.

The commentarial literature, compiled and translated into Pali by Buddhaghosa and others in the fifth century CE, is enormous and carries much of the doctrinal interpretation that defines Theravada as distinct from other early schools.

Historical value

The canon is the principal source for early Buddhism and, incidentally, for the society of the Gangetic plain in the mid-first millennium BCE — its kingdoms, cities, trades, castes, and rival teachers.

Its evidential status requires care. It was fixed by one school, several centuries after the events it describes, and it is not a transcript. Comparison with the parallel collections preserved in Chinese translation from other schools' canons is the main method for identifying early material, and where those agree the case for antiquity is strong.

Status

The Pali Canon is authoritative for Theravada Buddhism across Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. It has been printed in several national editions, and its availability in translation from the late nineteenth century shaped how Buddhism was first understood in Europe — with lasting consequences, since the resulting picture was of a Buddhism far more textual and less ritual than any actually practised.