Another topic was getting into the division between arhats, pratyekabuddhas, and buddhas, etc. I thought it would be interesting to see if searches for common terms for “pratyekabuddha” in the Chinese agamas would yield any interesting results.
I found very few mentions in the Samyukta Agama and Dirgha Agama (6 and 5 instances, respectively). I’m seeing some more mentions of them in the Madhyama Agama and the Ekottarika Agama (26 and 103 instances, respectively). These are purely counts of segments featuring these common terms, so one sutra may have multiple instances counted…
If I’m not missing any search terms (辟支, 獨覺, 緣覺, 支佛, 貝支迦), I would have to tentatively conclude that there is almost nothing about pratyekabuddhas in the SA. To give some idea about the difference between the SA and the EA in this regard:
- SA pratyekabuddha-to-arhat ratio: 6/228 (2.5%)
- EA pratyekabuddha-to-arhat ratio: 103/252 (41%)
And just for fun:
- SA bodhisattva-to-arhat ratio: 1/228 (0.4%)
- EA bodhisattva-to-arhat ratio: 60/252 (24%)
Within the SA there are 3 sutras with this term, but apparently only one sutra (SA 1233) in which the pratyekabuddha has any meaningful role as a concept, rather than just being an item being enumerated. Looking at the Pali parallel for this sutra (SN 3.20), though, there is no mention of a pratyekabuddha…
Does anyone know if there are similar “pratyekabuddha” discrepancies between the Pali nikayas, such as between the SN and the AN collections?