Technical Question: Finding a Sutta by its Name

Apl · December 31, 2020, 5:02pm

Hello friends,

using Sutta Central means for me mainly to search for a sutta´s root text and to get to know where to find it (MN, AN…). The result one gets when typing the name of a sutta in the searching field though, even when choosing “Root Texts” in the sidebar, is everything else except the sutta itself. Please let me know how to proceed. Thanks a lot.

Anne

Danny · December 31, 2020, 5:13pm

Welcome Annne! Some tips from Bhante Sujato earlier this week:

Apl · December 31, 2020, 6:04pm

Hi Danny,
I tried searching with only the sutta´s name (Anattalakkhaṇa), it didn´t work. In this case I did not know the sutta´s id and had therefore find it out through Google.
Anne

Charlotteannun · December 31, 2020, 7:20pm

I agree, wish it were easier. Searching around, I found it comes up from the search term Anattalakkhaṇasutta. 🤷

Javier · December 31, 2020, 7:25pm

At the moment, I just use google

sujato · January 1, 2021, 6:58am

Generally speaking just write the full name of the sutta in Pali, including the suffix “sutta” and you should be good. No diacritcals needed.

In this case, search anattalakkhanasutta.

Apl · January 1, 2021, 5:16pm

Dear Bhante and engineers of SC,

I like to suggest that the finding of a sutta in the search box by its name and by its id is made very easy. Here the site needs some re-engineering. Today I plotted AN 10.61, an id, in the search box. The result is 104 texts that contain “an”, not at all related to AN 10.61.

Perfect would be, when plotting the id, the Pali name with and without hyphen between name and the term “sutta” would show in sequence:

Root text in Pali and selectable translations
Commentaries
Cross references

Please make using Sutta Central easy.

Khemarato.bhikkhu · January 1, 2021, 9:02pm

If you go to SuttaCentral.net/[sutta_id] you’ll get a handy list of translations, root text, and parallels:

SuttaCentral doesn’t (currently) host commentaries.

Apl · January 2, 2021, 10:16am

Thanks, Bhante. That´s very helpful.

DimiG · February 19, 2021, 4:21pm

Hello! Can you help me with the alike issue to? I read an article and there were suttas mentions there and the thing is I can’t find these suttas anywhere. Whatever I tried it couldn’t help. Suttas numbers are:
“A.V, 333”, “M.I, 491-92”, “Dhp.142” Please, if they really exist it will literally change my life.

Ficus · February 19, 2021, 4:28pm

Welcome Dimi!
It seems you are quite new to reading the suttas , so here is a fabulous resource that can help you take the first steps…

Referring to your question, to help understand the abbreviations try this:

DimiG · February 19, 2021, 5:00pm

Thanks a lot, will try find them using this

sabbamitta · February 19, 2021, 5:42pm

Yes, that is a difficult issue.

The problem is that there are different numbering systems for Suttas. The numbers you mention seem to belong to a rather old system that refers to volume and page numbers of a particular printed edition, namely the PTS (Pali Text Society) edition. In the time of internet this seems a bit outdated, but especially among scholars it is still widely in use.

Fortunately there are people who have built some tools to address this. One of them is for example this PTS converter.

If I enter for example “A.V, 333”, I get AN 11.12. It even links to the Sutta in root language and translations on SuttaCentral! (This is the first time I use this converter, and I am impressed!)

Have fun to find the other Suttas too!