Academic Buddhism

[thomaslaw]

@Malunkyaputta

I would be very interested to know if textual criticism has ever been used to layer the Suttas in the Pali canon, and how to tell which teachings are most likely to go back to the historical Buddha and which could have been added later.

Your question is about the formation of early Buddhist texts. The following discussions on angas may be useful:

Three Aṅgas of the Saṁyutta Nikāya

I wanted to make an outline of just the Saṁyutta Nikāya and what the original groupings were according to the aṅga theory of Yin Shun. As a source, I used some comparative diagrams from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, by Mun-keat Choong. I included just the contents of the Saṁyutta Nikāya, and left out correspondences to the Saṃyukta Āgama. I have also fixed a few mistakes in the saṁyutta names and numbers as printed in the book. The highest organization principle is the aṅga. The…

Why were suttas made in the form that they are in?

Regarding the reconstructed SA, see also: Choong Mun-keat, “Ācāriya Buddhaghosa and Master Yinshun 印順 on the Three-aṅga Structure of Early Buddhist Texts” in Research on the Saṃyukta-āgama (Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts, Research Series 8; edited by Dhammadinnā), Taiwan: Dharma Drum Corporation, August 2020, pp. 883-932. https://www.academia.edu/44055729/%C4%8 (“Ācāriya Buddhaghosa and Master Yinshun 印順 on the Three-aṅga Structure of Early Buddhist Texts” 2020)

Why were suttas made in the form that they are in?

EBTs, such as the four principal Nikayas/Agamas, were not collected and compiled in the Buddha’s chronology of practice, or with events & teachings happening in more chronological order. The four basic texts were collected and then compiled at the first and second councils according to the 9 angas (classifications). E.g. in various suttas there is a mention of: "the discourses, mixed prose and verse, expositions, verses, inspired utterances, quotations, birth stories, marvelous accounts, and…