SuttaCentral Upgrade, 2014

2014 saw the introduction of the most significant expansion of content and coverage since the site’s inception in 2005. Our initial data was provided by Rod Bucknell’s correspondence tables for the four main nikāyas/āgamas, so our coverage of other material has been limited or non-existent. With the new version we finally include the entire spectrum of Early Buddhist Texts, including the books of the Khuddaka Nikāya, the Vinayas, and the Abhidhamma. In doing so we rely entirely on the hard work and dedication of those who entered the digital texts, edited and made them available. While most of our text comes from third parties, in some cases we are creating our own digital editions, and even some fresh translations, and we offer them freely to whoever wishes to use them, in the spirit of the Dhamma.

While the correspondences, translations, and other details are far from complete, this is a major step forward, and is the outcome of countless hours hard work and dedication from our small team. Here are the main details of the changes.

Pali canon

SuttaCentral now includes the entire text of the Pali canon. We use the Mahāsaṅgīti edition, which is extremely consistent and well edited, and provides some 26,500 variant readings and cross references from a dozen editions. The entire canon totals around 2.8 million words. It includes the late books of the Khuddaka, such as the Milindapañha. The whole canon is presented in the consistent semantic structure used throughout SuttaCentral.

Chinese and Sanskrit texts

We have added the vast bulk of the early Vinaya material in Chinese and Sanskrit. The Chinese material is taken from the CBETA digital edition, while the Sanskrit comes from a number of sources, primarily GRETIL and the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon. In all cases the texts have been provided with a detailed semantic markup, with headings and so on to facilitate reading and comparison. We currently host around 500,000 words of Sanskrit, and over 2 million words in Chinese.

We also introduce a Chinese lookup tool, which parallels the Pali lookup that has been available on SuttaCentral for some time. This tool is based on Charles Muller’s excellent Digital Dictionary of Buddhism. It provides brief definitions, and entries are linked to the full definition on the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism website. These lookup tools make reading these ancient texts just that little bit easier.

Vinaya

By far the biggest single area of expansion is in the Vinaya. While the Vinaya, since it pertains to monastic conduct, is perhaps of less general interest than the Suttas, it includes countless details of everyday life that shed light on many of the obscurities in the Suttas. Moreover, since we have a massive set of parallel Vinayas, it is a fertile, not to say demanding, field for comparative studies. And of course, the basic role of the Vinaya remains as it ever was: to be a guide for the lives of Buddhist monks and nuns.

SuttaCentral’s Vinaya coverage now includes:

• Correspondences for Vinaya rules, totally some 14,000 individual instances of rules across 45 texts.
• Correspondences for Khandhakas and some other sections of the Vinaya.
• Most Vinaya texts in Chinese and Sanskrit.
• Full English translation of the Pali Vinaya by I.B. Horner, with additions by Ven. Brahmali.

Many of these resources appear for the first time on the web. We believe this is the release of a truly digital edition of the entire translation of the Pali Vinaya. The translated text is available on the website, while the entire book, including Horner’s lengthy introductions and very extensive notes, are available on the Downloads page. It is also the first time the Vinaya correspondence data has been available in digital form, and we have a wider, and hopefully more accurate, set of correspondences than in any other source known to us.

Method for the Vinaya correspondences

Here I outline in brief the method I used for compiling the Vinaya correspondences. I hope to publish a more detailed description and bibliography at some point.

My primary source work was Nishimoto’s 1928 paper on comparative pātimokkha rules. While I can’t speak Japanese, I was able to make sense of his tables, which were kindly supplied by Shayne Clarke. I checked this against Pachows’s book, which was apparently compiled without knowledge of Nishimoto’s earlier work. A variety of more specialized studies were also consulted.

Most of these works assume that the Vinaya rules of one school are the same in the Vibhaṅga and the Pātimokkha, except in the case of multiple separate texts such as with the Sarvāstivāda. However, as I proceeded I discovered that in several cases, especially in the Chinese Vinayas, the Vibhaṅga and the Pātimokka had minor differences in numbering. So I decided to treat each individual text as a separate entity, even though in some cases, notable the Pali, the numbering of rules is identical.

Due to this and other minor differences, each of the sources I consulted gave slightly different numberings for the rules. Almost all of these variations occur in the sekhiya rules, while the remainder of Vinaya rules are almost entirely straightforward. In fact I spent probably more time trying to straighten out the sekhiya rules than the rest of the Vinaya combined, and I frequently despaired of the task. Only the thought that my predecessors had thought it worthwhile and had come so far kept me going. Even so, I am far from confident that they have been properly sorted out. Given the multiple uncertainties involved it is unlikely that we will ever be able to complete this task. So please treat the sekhiya correspondences with care!

In cases where my sources differed, I consulted the original Chinese and Sanskrit texts, using the texts as published on SuttaCentral. There is obviously a degree of subjectivity involved in making these decisions, and on the whole I probably tended to ascribe correspondences a little more liberally than Nishimoto or Pachow. This was mainly because I used a wider variety of sources, especially from the Sanskrit, and sometimes similarities emerge that are not obvious just from the Chinese texts. Nevertheless, as I said above, almost all such marginal cases pertain to the sekhiyas.

Given the vast numbers of parallel rules in different texts, I had to find a way of assigning each instance of each rule with a unique ID. These IDs are not only used to name each rule, they also form the URLs that identify the web page for that rule. These IDs use abbreviations that are subject to a number of constraints: they must be unique on SuttaCentral, case-insensitive, and use no special characters. While the method might seems a little arcane at first, once you have remembered a few abbreviations it is really quite simple. Pi Tv Bu Pm Pj 1 is “Pali Theravāda Bhikkhu Pātimokkha Pārājika 1″; Zh Sv Bi Vb Ss 3 is “Chinese Sarvāstivāda Bhikkhunī Vibhaṅga Saṅghādisesa 3”, and so on.

Note that throughout we try to use Pali names for titles, rule names and so on. This is simply to preserve consistency, not out of any belief that Pali was the original language of these texts. On the contrary, each text or school would have used a slightly different dialect. Sometimes we find variations even within the same text. Moreover, in many texts it is difficult to ascertain what the traditional title of a rule was, or even if there was one, as such information is usually merely inferred from the summaries or uddānas. In cases where the is no Pali title, we supply a Sanskrit title when possible. These don’t represent any particular Sanskrit texts, but are selected simply on the basis of what seems most clear. Very rarely I supply a title in Pali form for a rule that doesn’t exist in Pali; this is where rules are paired with a nearly identical one that is in the Pali. Where there is neither Pali nor Sanskrit, I have supplied an English title. In all cases these titles, as with headings for Buddhist texts generally, should be regarded merely as aids for the reader supplied by editors, ancient or modern, rather than as intrinsic to the text.

In addition to the pātimokkha correspondences, we also offer much less detailed correspondences of the Khandhakas. These are based on the details provided by Frauwallner in his classic study. I was tempted to include his more detailed breakdown, which showed parallels in various sections within each Khandhaka, however in the end I kept the correspondences at the level of the chapter or Khandhaka only. This is one the whole much simpler than dealing with the pātimokkha correspondences, although there are, as always, unexpected complexities and problematic exceptions.

In this case the major exception is the Mahāsaṅghika Vinaya, which doesn’t really have a Khandhaka section at all. Frauwallner treated it as a Khandhaka, albeit one that had been drastically reshaped by later editors, but Clarke has more recently shown that this is not the case. The exact relation between this and other Vinayas remains uncertain, although it seems likely to me that Frauwallner was correct to treat it as a later reorganization of material that previously resembled the Khandhakas more closely. However, despite the great differences in form, the subject matter discussed in various sections of the Mahāsaṅghika Vinaya shares much in common with the corresponding chapters in the Khandhakas. Since the main purpose of providing correspondences on SuttaCentral is to help the reader find similar passages for comparison, I have therefore retained as much as possible of Frauwallner’s correspondences for the Mahāsaṅghika Vinaya. Due to the way these passages are scattered through the text, however, it was not possible to show everything.

Abhidhamma

The full version of the Pali canon now includes the text of all six Pali Abhidhamma works, and we plan to add the original text of the related early texts in Chinese and Sanskrit. In addition, we have created digital editions of the English translations of two Abhidhamma books, the Points of Controversy (Kathāvatthu) and the Book of Analysis (Vibhaṅga). These need final editing before including, but we hope to have them ready soon. We also plan to digitize the English translation of the Puggalapaññatti. We don’t plan to offer translations of the remaining Pali Abhidhamma works—Dhammasaṅgaṇī, Yamaka, Dhātukathā, and Paṭṭhāna—as they are so severely formulaic that it is scarcely any advantage to read them in translation; and one for this reason of them, the Yamaka, has never been translated. Moreover, it is in the Vibhaṅga, Puggalapaññatti, and Kathāvatthu that we find many parallels with both suttas and Chinese/Sanskrit Abhidhamma texts.

Future

SuttaCentral is in ongoing development, and we continue to maintain and improve the core data on which we rely. With such a big release there will of course be many bugs, and many improvements to be made.

For the next phase of development on SuttaCentral, we plan to emphasize the following.

• Translations: We are currently working on adapting new translations in several languages. We are also working on ways to improve the discoverability of translations.
• Typography: We are working with Rosetta Type to develop a suite of fonts for Devanagari, Sinhala, Burmese, and Thai, as well as international Roman.
• Chinese: We aim to include the full text of the Chinese āgamas.
• Android/iPhone apps: We have already made an alpha app for Android, and plan to develop fully blown apps for both Android and iPhone/iPad.
• Search: The search on SuttaCentral is already pretty good, but we have plans to make a richer and more integrated experience.

With the emergence of the first major translations of early Buddhist texts from Chinese (MA and SA), and Tibetan (Upāyika), we are entering a golden age of early Buddhist studies. In addition to its purely linguistic and historical interest, this has already inspired, and continues to inspire, new movements and developments within Buddhist cultures. The early Buddhist texts are always challenging and radical: that is their purpose. They inspire those two great Buddhist emotions: saṁvega, an sense of awe, and pasāda, serene confidence. Through these texts, our only genuine historical link with the Buddha, we can question our assumptions and deepen our insight into the Dhamma.