Talk:Tripiṭaka
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A time of writing / publication would be handy. Jachin 01:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
- It's not really possible to assign such a date to the Tripitaka as a whole. The Pali Canon was first written down in Sri Lanka about 100 years after the life of the Buddhja (making it around 400-300 BCE, depending on the date you like); some of the texts in the sutta pitaka and the Vinaya may date to the time of the Buddha. The Pali Abhidhamma was still being added to during the reign of Ashoka Maurya. Some Mahayana texts were composed in China but given a-historical Sanskrit pedigrees. Some Tibetan texts came directly from the Indian scholastic tradition; others were composed in Tibet. There should be some additional detail thrown in about the various dates, but there's still a lot of discussion over dating; for instance, the fact that a text appears in a written form later than another text doesn't necesarily mean that the text that was written down later was a new composition or something- a particular oral tradition may have just made the jump to writing later on. The various versions of the Tripitika have been in publication in several different languages and a dozen more scripts pretty much continuously for the last 2000 years. --Clay Collier 03:15, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
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- The first half of the second sentence is wrong: the Pali canon was written down in the last century BC.The second half is correct, but the next is understated: additions were almost certainly being made to the Kathavatthu up to the time of writing down, if not later. I think material about dating is better placed in more specialized articles. Tripitaka is really an artificial concept, a word for a variety of things which are better dealt with separately. This should be almost a disambiguation article. Peter jackson 16:49, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Simple anyone?
The article seems to be excessivly long, I am not sure if that is just me, but if at all possible, it would be nice to get a Simple English version.
[edit] How to pronounce it
Does anyone know how to pronounce tripitaka?
- Strictly speaking, it should probably be pronounced TRIPitterker in English or TRIPittuhkuh in American. In practice I suspect a variety of otlher pronunciations are used. Peter jackson 11:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Links
The article gives links to the 3 pitakas. The article on Vinaya Pitaka details the various fairly similar vinayas. The article on Abhidharma Pitaka details the various quite different abhidharmas. The article on Sutra Pitaka has been deleted & replaced by a disambig, pointing to Sutta Pitaka & Buddhist texts. The latter has no section heading for SP. Is there any sense to all this? Peter jackson (talk) 18:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
On a quick look, Buddhist texts appears to give no explanation of what Sutra Pitaka is. Peter jackson (talk) 18:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Murge?
Shouldn't this page be murged with the Tipitaka page? They are the same thing!!! 86.143.22.237 (talk) 10:48, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
- Tripitaka is a largely meaningless title for Buddhist scriptures in general. Tipitaka is the native name for the Pali Canon, the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. Peter jackson (talk) 11:01, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
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- You're right. Have a look at my rewrite. Peter jackson (talk) 15:26, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Well, it's both, I think. The native name for the Pali Canon is a word that means "the Buddhist scriptures". What else would they call it? As in certain other cases, when you use these jargon terms in the Pali form rather than the Sanskrit, it strongly implies that you mean to refer to the Theravada form specifically. For instance, you wouldn't normally say "sutta" unless you were talking about a sutta from the Pali Canon. That said, I suppose that hypothetically, if there were a Mahayana Buddhist raised as a native Pali speaker (somewhere in Palistan or Palinesia, perhaps) he would probably refer to the Heart Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, etc., as suttas.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 17:04, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
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- What's both what? I don't see what you're getting at here. T(r)ipitaka doesn't mean Buddhist scriptures; it means 3 baskets. It came to be the conventional name for Buddhist canons of scripture because many of them were in fact in 3 baskets & individually called that. I think the article says that, tho' perhaps it should say it earlier. I'll have a look. Peter jackson (talk) 10:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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- It says at the start that it means 3 baskets. I've corrected a few later statements.
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- As usual, the convention is to use Sanskrit for pan-Buddhist terminology, even tho' modern Buddhists themselves don't use it. Perhaps that should be made clear. Peter jackson (talk) 10:53, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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- see what you think of how I've worded it now. Peter jackson (talk) 10:55, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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- What I meant was, "tipiṭaka" is a word that means both "tripiṭaka" and "Pāli Canon", since the people who tend to use tipiṭaka usually see those as the same thing. The current wording seems to suggest that Sanskrit was the original Buddhist language and that other Buddhist languages only began to be used after the decline of Sanskrit.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 12:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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- You're right, it's misleading, so I've changed it again. The rest of what you say gets into quite complicated areas of logic & philosophy of meaning. The literal meaning of the 2 terms is of course the same, but their references are different. In between, we have secondary meanings. In Mahayana, tripitaka can mean either Buddhist scriptures or "Hinayana" scriptures. Peter jackson (talk) 15:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
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We still ought to consider consistency. Why is there an article on Abhidharma Pitaka in addition to this article, but only a dab for Sutra Pitaka? That last linked only to Sutta Pitaka & Buddhist texts, with the last link being pretty useless. I've changed it to go to Sutta Pitaka, Agama (text)#Buddhism & Mahayana sutras, which seems nuch more sensible if we're going to have a dab. But why the distinction? All 3 are terms applied to radically different collections of texts by different Buddhists. Is there some good reason for treating them differently? Peter jackson (talk) 14:45, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Why is there even a discussion to "murge" (lol) "Tipitaka" (a redirect page) with "Tripiṭaka"?--Esteban Barahona (talk) 21:14, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
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- In this article: "Tipiṭaka." Encyclopædia Britannica. Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008. Tripitaka deals only with southern Buddhism. No Mahayana at all, strange to say. Greetings, Sacca 04:16, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] Alternative proposal: disambiguation
It seems clear from comments above & at Talk:Pali Canon#Murge? that the very existence of an article on Tripitaka misleads some people into supposing that there is some definite thing called that. I therefore propose instead that this page should become a dab, reading roughly as follows.
Tripitaka can refer to
- the Pali Canon of Thervada Buddhism
- the Kangyur, scriptures of Tibetan Buddhism
- the Chinese Buddhist Canon
- Xuanzang, a Chinese Buddhist monk
Useful material can move to Buddhist texts if not specific to one of the above.
To make clear that the above 3 canons are really quite different things, let me just point out that the Kanjur (several times as common spelling on internet search, as I pointed out, but I think the article still has the other name) is 2 or 3 times as long as the Pali Canon, & the Chinese canon is several times as long as the Kanjur. Peter jackson (talk) 10:52, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
- Well, the wording isn't perfect, but the general idea is a good one, imho. --Storkk (talk) 11:33, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal. I was just doing some categorizing within Buddhist texts and found this problem... and then this discussion. I've created a category 'Pali canon' for all the articles on it and embedded that in the Tripitaka category. I hadn't realised this discussion was going on or I'd have left off acting. It wasn't intended to prejudice this discussion which I was unaware of. But that said... since Mahayana sutras already appeared in the category Tripitaka something really needed doing to distinguish the Pali canon material from other Buddhist canonical literature. I'd further suggest changing 'Tripitaka' as a category to something like 'Buddhist canonical literature' Any objections to me proceeding with that? Dakinijones (talk) 12:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
- A problem with that is the inconsistent ways such terms are used: see User:Peter jackson#Canon(ical). Peter jackson (talk) 08:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
- Perhaps a more useful category would be Buddhavacana. I see there isn't even ana article on it yet. Perhaps I'll create one. Peter jackson (talk) 10:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
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- I'd love to see an article on Buddhavacana so please do write it... there's times I've really wanted to be able to link to one. I see a problem though in having Buddhavacana as a category name since it's quite inaccessible for people without a Sanskrit - or at least Theravada Buddhist - background. Is there an English language term that you'd be happy with? Dakinijones (talk) 21:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
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- Schopen writes about the vagueness of the term buddhavacana somewhere. Apparently, it came to have quite a bit of polemical weight, and so people applied it freely to whatever they thought was important. In practice, then, it meant the same thing as "canon".—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 01:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
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- I'd be interested to see a reference on that. I have references to say that Buddhavacana is the Pali Canon in Theravada (does Schopen or anyone else disagree with that?) & Kanjur in Tibetan Buddhism. My understanding, without a currently available ref, is that in East Asian Buddhism it means Agamas, Vinaya & Mahayana sutras (including lower tantras). Peter jackson (talk) 08:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
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- I think we definitely need an article on Buddhavacana but it has certainly got polemical connotations since the various schools don't always agree about what is the 'word of Buddha'. Canon is less contentious since it indicates more what the text has been defined as by some Buddhists in some time and place... Buddhavacana is more of a statement of doctrine and as such can easily invite debate. In practice, a Buddhist will tend to see their own Canon as Buddhavacana but - for example - although a Theravada practitioner might readily accept that the Tibetan Buddhist Canon is indeed its Canon, they might be much less willing to accept that all of it is indeed Buddhavacana. Can't think of any good sources on this for you right now but I'll pass them on if any come to mind Dakinijones (talk) 18:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
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- I should go into more detail. In the citations on my page, Gombrich uses the term "scripture" to include both canons & commentaries. The other citation uses the term "canonical" to include both scriptures & other writings. This makes both terms ambiguous, so we should avoid them. I thought "Buddhavacana" was unambiguous in the sense that it had a fairly well defined meaning within each tradition, but Nat's remark above seems to question this. I'd forgotten that Honen calls Shan-tao's works Buddhavacana, 7 the situation may be more complicated. perhaps we'll end up having to avoid such cross-traditional categories altogether if they don't have clear meanings. Peter jackson (talk) 08:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
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- I'd be happy to go with another term if you can think of one. But to a certain extent all terms are imprecise... they describe reality rather than are it. I think most applicable terms will have an academic somewhere debating its precise meaning. For the higher levels of a category tree that's really not a problem - in fact, the vaguer the better in the highest levels. Our top level category is religion which is very far from precisely defined... and we can't even all agree whether Buddhism is a religion or safer called something like a belief system or maybe even a philosophy. Within an article it matters a great deal, of course, what the precise meaning of a term is, in categorisation the whole point is to start generalising about the specific articles. Personally I think as long as we had your material on the vagueness of Canon (and how it relates to Tripitaka, Buddhavacana and so forth) in a lead article on Buddhist Canons, then the term would work very well as a category.
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- Interestingly, though, the Library Catalogs seem to go with Tripitaka - Buddhist Tripitaka appears 4 or 5 times more often than Buddhist Canon according to the google books search of libraries. In the general google books search Tripitaka appears only marginally more often than Buddhist Canon... although it seems like the term Tripitaka may be more common in pre-50's books, so perhaps there's a change in usuage ocurring? I'd prefer an English Language term as I think it'd be better used by WP editors in general - being more accessible - but it seems like a close call as to what term the sources are using. Whatever we go for, I do think we need a category of texts that are viewed by their adherants as Canonical (whatever we go with calling it) as opposed to practice texts, commentaries, songs and poems of realisation, meditation manuals, biographies etc etc simply because our readers will want to know what is Canonical or not, since it's a fundamental concern of the Western/English language approach to religion. Dakinijones (talk) 12:01, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
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- I'm still not getting across what I mean. The point is that both "scripture" & "canonical" are used by some authorities to mean what you probably mean by canonical, but by others to include a wider range of texts, including much of what you describe as "practice texts, commentaries, songs and poems of realisation, meditation manuals, biographies etc etc"; even Tripitaka,in the Sino-Japanese tradition, includes a lot of that. There's no single term that unambiguously means what we want it to mean, unless it's Buddhavacana, for which we await more details from Nat. Even if we combine terms, eg "Buddhist canonical scriptures", we still have ambiguity, since some authorities would include the Tenjur, others not. Peter jackson (talk) 08:19, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
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- I'd agree with you that ambiguity seems to be virtually unavoidable. I went to check what the Christian cetegory had done and they've avoided the issue by simply ignoring it. If we go the way of the Christianity category we'll just have sections for the separate Canons and no group category. I really don't know if it's possible to find an unambiguous term... "The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism" p.121 onwards (available limited view via google books) has a discussion of Buddhavacana, Canons etc you might find useful. Dakinijones (talk) 14:09, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
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- Hi, sorry to exert a disruptive influence on the discussion. My only point in bringing up the ambiguity of buddhavacana is to remind the interlocutors that the usages of this term do not necessarily match what would seem to us like a sensible way to describe something as "the words of the Buddha". For instance, I would not be too surprised to learn that the Platform Sutra of the 6th Patriarch was counted as buddhavacana, even though nobody ever claimed that it was spoken by the Buddha. That said, I now think that Peter and I have roughly the same understanding of the issue. As far as I know, the statement, "Buddhavacana is the Pali Canon in Theravada ... & Kangyur in Tibetan Buddhism ... in East Asian Buddhism it means Agamas, Vinaya & Mahayana sutras" is roughly correct, although, as Peter points out, there can be some ambiguity at the edges. One source of wiggle room is that the line between "Mahayana sutras" and associated peripheral texts might be vague in some cases.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 18:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
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- There's fuzziness at the edges everywhere. The contents of the Pali Canon & Kanjur vary between editions. Actually being spoken by the Buddha was never a requirement. Eg Theragatha, Vimalakirti &c. So I think we should go with Buddhavacana as the relevant category, & create an article for it too. Peter jackson (talk) 08:14, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
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- OK,I've made a start on the article. Peter jackson (talk) 08:25, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] Title
I strongly disapprove of the use of the exotic character in the title. On many computers this shows as an oblong or blank, which looks ridiculous. Peter jackson (talk) 08:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
- I agree... best to leave the diacritics for the body of the text. There's also a category Pāli which is virtually inaccessible by HotCat so I suspect it's being massively underused. Dakinijones (talk) 17:37, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
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- just get decent unicode support. Who doesn't use unicode anyway?! I suggest you upgrade to Firefox, Safari or Opera. You know you're suggesting to standarize on ASCII text? When all wikipedias (that I participate in) are standarizing on unicode?--Esteban Barahona (talk) 21:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.251.54.3 (talk) 18:29, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Mahayana?
Mahayana's text is not the orginal, historical tipitaka. The original tipitaka are the words of the Buddha and not the words of any monk. I see it would be best to seperate the Mahayana varaition of the tipitaka and the historical tipitaka —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dalek666 (talk • contribs) 14:14, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
