Bhante Bodhirasa’s latest update on DPD has some interesting remarks:
While working on the Dīgha Nikāya, I noticed a remarkable overlap in unique vocabulary and grammatical idiom with books 14-18 of the Khuddaka Nikāya (Jātakas, Niddesas, and Paṭisambhidāmagga). This strong similarity suggests a shared provenance. Have any scholars out there explored this phenomenon in depth?
Jatakas and Niddesas are remarkably late, and their shared language is no surprise to me. I never thought I’d see PS next to them, as their contents and language seem so different. All of them having a link to DN linguistically? Interesting observations.
Can you give an example? I entered “Bodhirasa” “DN” and “Khuddaka” into the search engine and all I found was your thread here on SC
I don’t think I’d be qualified to participate in a discussion but it’d still be interesting to see some specific examples of this “unique vocabulary” or “the grammatical idioms” DN shares with the Jātakas for instance.
edit: Ok, it’s on the DPD-site? Can’t seem to find it…
I started reading DN recently (currently on DN26) after having interacted with it very little compared to the other three primary Nikayas, and it’s honestly been pretty difficult because after about DN16 the suttas begin to read more like folktale than religious discourse, but are still presented as authoritative and are told in the repetitive style of the suttas which really doesn’t go well with their contents (e.g DN24 where the Buddha criticises someone for only being convinced by supernatural feats… and then gives up and just performs supernatural feats to prove that he can be trusted? This portrayal of the Buddha really makes him seem like the untrustworthy teachers he critiqued when considering texts like DN11).
I’m not at all surprised it’s late, but I didn’t expect to hear that it might have been composed as late as the Jatakas. I wonder if this has been considered before
The old religions before they became philosophical were a community’s way of remembering the past through storytelling, coping with disease and disaster through prophesy and ritual, and seeing the world as partly physical and partly spiritual. And, yes, tribal shamans would often claim to have magical or miraculous powers. Buddhism is a fascinating religion to me because it preserves an old form of animist religion, but then it developed into a high philosophy tradition as history marched on. With Buddhism, we get the full spectrum of human spirituality.
As far as DN is concerned, it does seem to be a collection that grew over time. Just comparing its contents with the other two Dirgha Agamas, it seems to be older in the beginning and later in the end. The first division in DN is the one that all three versions shared, so it’s the best candidate to be the oldest part of the collection to me.
