Tripitaka

The three baskets

The Vinaya Pitaka contains the monastic discipline. The Sutta Pitaka contains the discourses attributed to the Buddha and his immediate disciples, arranged in collections by length and by subject. The Abhidhamma Pitaka contains systematic analysis of mind and phenomena, restating the material of the discourses in technical terms without narrative.

The word pitaka means basket, most plausibly referring to the containers in which palm-leaf manuscripts were kept, though an older explanation connects it to baskets passed along a line of workers.

Transmission

The material was transmitted orally for several centuries, by communities of reciters specialising in particular collections. The formulaic repetition characteristic of the discourses — long passages recurring word for word — is a feature of oral composition and preservation rather than a stylistic accident.

Writing came later, traditionally in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE.

Versions

No single Tripitaka exists. The Pali canon of the Theravada is the only one surviving complete in an Indian language. The Chinese canon preserves the collections of several schools in translation, together with a large Mahayana literature. The Tibetan canon is arranged differently, as Kangyur, the word of the Buddha, and Tengyur, the treatises.

The Vinaya and the main discourse collections agree closely across these versions where they can be compared, which supports a common core predating the schools' division. The Abhidhamma collections differ substantially, indicating that this layer was developed separately by each school after the split — which is itself a useful piece of evidence about the chronology of the canon.