ME35

Theravada Tradition: A Historical and Doctrinal Study

ME35 24-03-2011     (4:00 to 5:00)

(Class Notes Only)

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Evolution of Abhidhamma, at the time of the first and the second councils, Abhidhamma was not developed as a separate section of the Pāli canon. The term Abhidhamma occurs in the Suttapiṭaka but not in the sense of a separate piṭaka. Tradition says that Abhidhamma Piṭaka was preached to the deities after enlightenment by the Buddha himself. Tradition also says that Kathāvatthu-pakaraṇa, the last text of the Abhidhammapiṭaka was arranged on the basic
doctrines of the Buddha by ven. Moggaliputtatissa thera at the time of the third Buddhist councils in the 3rd century B.C.

Four main processes have been carried out at the councils in order to preserve the Buddha’s teachings: Collection of the teachings, classification of the teaching, abstraction of the doctrinal parts from the teachings and definition and analysis of the doctrines. Through the above processes the Abhidhamma canon came into being.

Abhidharma (Sanskrit) or Abhidhamma (Pāli) are ancient Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic reworking of doctrinal material appearing in the Mahāyāna Sutras (Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra). The Sūtra is set in Laṅkā, the island fortress capital of Rāvaṇa, the king of rākṣasas. The Abhidhamma works do not contain systematic philosophical treatises, but summaries or abstract and systematic lists. There is a similarity between the traditions of the Adhidhamma and that of the Mahayana, which also claimed to be too difficult for the people living in the Buddha's time. They were not accepted as canonical by the Mahāsanghika school.

Numerous apparently independent and unrelated Abhidharma traditions arose in India, roughly during the period from the 2nd or 3rd Century B.C., to the 5th Century, in the Linguistic history of India. The Buddha taught in Magadha, but the four most important places in his life are all outside of it. It is likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo- Aryan, which had a very high degree of mutual intelligibility. There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pāli. Three kinds of Indo-Aryan; they are - Old Indo-Aryan: The earliest evidence of the group is from Vedic Sanskrit, the language used in the ancient preserved texts of the Indian subcontinent, the foundational canon of Hinduism known as the Vedas. In about the 4th century BC, the Sanskrit language was codified and standardized by the grammarian Panini, called "Classical Sanskrit" by convention.

Middle Indo-Aryan: Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects continued to evolve. The oldest attested prakrits (i.e., middle Indic languages) are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pāli and Ardha Māgadhi, respectively. The prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indic dialects. "Apabhramsa" is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indic with early Modern Indic, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. And New Indo-Aryan: The Indic languages of Northern India and Pakistan form a dialect continuum. The Indo-Aryan prakrits also gave rise to languages like Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Nepali, Marathi, and Punjabi, which are not considered to be Hindi despite being part of the same dialect continuum.

Which is in danger of losing its labial and velar articulations through spirantization in many positions: Hindi, Punjabi, Dogri, Sindhi, Gujarati, Bihari, Maithili, Sinhalese, Oriya, Standard Bengali, dialects of Rajasthani. There are no known historical documents about the early phases of the Romani language could not have left India significantly earlier than 1000 A.D.

The Arana-vibhanga Sutta of the Mijjimanikaya discourse is an exhortation on the practice of the Middle Path; ‘You should not cling to a regional language; you should not reject common usage.’ So it is said. In what connection is this said? How, bhikkhus, is there clinging to a regional language and rejection of common usage? Here, bhikkhus, in different regions, they call a ‘bowl’ pāti, ‘pāli’, patta, vittha, serāva, dhāropa, poṇa or pisīla. The word Pāli itself signifies "line" or "(canonical) text", in the sense of the line of original text quoted. This name for the language seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions.

“ye keci buddham saranam gatase na te gamissanti apaya-bhumim pahaya manusam deham deva- kayam paripuressantiti” "Those who have gone to the Buddha as refuge will not go to the realms of deprivation. On abandoning the human body, they will fill the ranks of the gods." “Idha Buddhe jate, Lumbini game ubbalike kate, Idha Buddho jato, Lumbini gamo ubbaliko kato” it is Pāli. This name for the language seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, Pāli is a literary language of the Prakrit language family. When the canonical texts were written down in Sri Lanka, in the 1st century BC.

The parinibbāna of the Buddha is described in the Mahāparinibbāna sutta, Digha Nikāya. Because of its attention to detail, the Mahaparinibbāna Sutta (of the Theravada tradition), though first committed to writing hundreds of years after his death, has been resorted to as the principal source of reference in most standard studies of the Buddha's life. Accounts of the purported events surrounding the Buddha's own parinirvāṇa are found in a wide range of Buddhist canonical literature. In addition to the Pāli Mahāparinibbāna sutta and its Sanskrit parallels In the Dighanikāya, Subha Sutta is almost word for word the same as the Sàmañña-phala Sutta. The chief difference is that the states of mind enumerated in the Sàmañña-phala as fruits of the life of a recluse are here divided under the three heads of sīla, samàdhi, and paññà (conduct, concentration, and intelligence). 

Samàdhi has not yet been found in any Indian book older than the Piñakas. Samàdhi on the other hand is a constant habit of mind, the oldest Sanskrit text. In this sutta, it is the first importance the evolution of philosophical and religious thought in India. . The Buddhist canon was originally, as is well known, altogether oral.

by Ashin Indaka (Kyone Pyaw)