On the Very Idea of an Article About the Pali Canon

To me, this is Collins’ magnum opus, a survey of Pali motifs, stories, and ideas we might describe as ‘utopian’: from Vessantara’s kingdom to analogies of Nibbāna, wheel-turning kings or the Aggañña Sutta. As Duangrudi Suksang wrote in her review, the style ‘does not readily render the reader a “nirvanic” experience’, but I would recommend this book as an introduction to Collins’ work. I find it more appealing than his criticism of the very idea of the Pali Canon or his later focus on civilization studies. He always had that bent, though, and the book is all about mapping a Theravādin-Pali ‘imaginaire’, i.e., cultural bloc—a substitute of sorts for the idea of a Canon.

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I wrote something of this in A History of Mindfulness. Check it out for lots of goodly details!

The basic idea is the the 9 angas clearly describe a set of scripture that covers similar ground to what we have today, yet the details of their exact relationship with the nikayas is hard to pin down. It seems that, as the collection grew, the division of texts by literary genre (anga) became unwieldy and a more systematic approach was sought, one that facilitated the training of mendicants in different monasteries to memorize different sets of scripture. These would be studied under specialists, since the whole collection was too large for any but the most talented monk to master. Yet at the same time, it is critical that all monastics should learn the most important teachings.

The Samantapasadika has the following passage:

Leaving aside many hundreds and thousands of monks who had memorized the entire nine aṅga textual dispensation of the Teacher, the ordinary persons, stream-enterers, once-returners, non-returners, and dry-vipassanā arahants, the Elder [Mahā Kassapa] gathered 499 monks who had memorized the Tipiṭaka with all its textual divisions, attained to the discriminations, of great might, mostly those included in the foremost disciples, gainers of the three realizations, etc., all being arahants.

This creates an association between the actions of the First Council and the shift from the anga system to the nikayas. Obviously the details stem from a much later text, but in any case it is clear that there was a shift from the angas to the nikayas, and it seems obvious that the Councils would been a part of this.

Note that all the schools have the nikaya/agama system, yet the contents vary considerably. Thus it seems that the general system was established early, perhaps indeed at the First Council, but the organizational details were left to different teachers.

Ven. YinShun suggests that although the anga system slightly came first, the gradual formation of the nine angas happened in parallel with development of the four Nikayas/Agamas, of which SN/SA (i.e., the synthesis of the first three angas) was the foundation (p.10):
Pages 9-11 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (251.7 KB)