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- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
- Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 11:57:00 CST
- Sender: English Language Discussion Group <WORDS-L@uga.cc.uga.edu>
- From: samant@CS.UCHICAGO.EDU
- Subject: Re: Asians
- Lines: 25
-
- > "What has survived of the scriptures exists now in 3 great collections:
- >
- > I. The Pali Tripitaka. ...
- >
- > II. The Chinese Tripitaka. ...
- >
- > III. The Tibetan Kanjur and Tanjur.
- >
- > IV. A number of Sanskrit works are preserved, but there exists no
- > collection or Canon of them."
-
- Now I realize that there was a confusion. By "sutra" I didn't mean just
- any scriptural writing, but a "sutra". Although of course, if you ask me
- what a sutra is, I have no answer to give except "something which is called
- a sutra".
-
- Certainly not everything in the Tripitaka is called "sutra". In fact the
- famous sutras (like the mahaparinibbana-sutta) are all, I think, in the
- sutta-pitaka, which is only one of the three pitakas ("tripitaka", of course,
- just means "three pitakas").
-
- In fact, even within the Sutta-Pitaka, there are some nikayas which (probably)
- don't have any suttas, e.g. the khuddaka-nikaya(?).
-
- tushar
-