Every world religion has its own founding texts. Muslims have the Koran. The Judaists have Torah. Christians have a New Testament. And the first sacred texts of Buddhists were written on palm leaves and occupied exactly three baskets (in those days, the records were kept and carried in baskets). Therefore, the first Buddhist texts began to be called Tipitaka, or Tripitaka, that is, literally "three baskets".
This is what Shakyamuni said
Before becoming Buddha Shakyamuni, Prince Siddhartha Gautama went through a long and difficult path of cultivation. At first he suffered and asked questions: why is there poverty, disease and death in the world? Why do people hate each other? Why is the world so cruel and unjust? He realized that all troubles come from human nature itself, which is imperfect. And if you develop your own spirit, you can free yourself from the fetters that impose material illusions. Then you can leave the wheel of samsara forever and find eternal peace.
The Buddha, like Christ, had disciples who sought to convey his teachings to other people. The names of the disciples are known: Ananda, Mahakashyap and Mahamaudgalyana. They reproduced the Buddha's teachings from memory. Like the disciples of Christ. These were poor texts, without any decorations, which were fluently, for memory, written down by the people who accompanied the Buddha.
Unlike religious treatises, they were written not in Sanskrit, but in Indian colloquial language - Pali. The Buddha, as his contemporaries believe, opposed the recording of his teachings in Sanskrit, because the majority of this language of sacred antiquity no longer knew. The followers of Buddhism had to return to Sanskrit later when it became clear that there were too many dialects in India. Sanskrit became the only means of unification.
There were probably ancient texts written in Sanskrit, but they have not survived to this day. This, of course, was aided by a violent struggle between Buddhists in India and adherents of Islam. Nevertheless, the recordings of the Buddha's teachings made by his disciples did not disappear without a trace. Although the Muslims who conquered India sought to burn everything related to the culture that existed there, much survived.
However, the texts that have survived to this day and are considered ancient can be called such only conditionally. All of them date back to the 1st century BC. It was then that the Buddhists gathered at the convention, at which they decided which texts should be included in the Buddha's teachings and which should not. This was the fourth Buddhist cathedral in Sri Lanka. It was from him that the written history of Buddhism began.
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Instructions and parables
The Buddha's teaching consisted of three sections (or three baskets) of texts: Vinaya Pitaka, Sutta Pitaka and Abhidharma Pitaka. Vinaya concerned purely the rules of the dormitory in the monastery community. Vinaya contained about 500 rules, illustrated by parables, which responded to various conflicts that arose between the leadership of the monasteries and the monks. Each rule was necessarily accompanied by the words of Gautama himself. Moreover, this text gave advice on how to use the Buddha's words to resolve disciplinary issues.
The Sutta Pitaka included the fundamental teachings of Buddhism about the four truths, the eightfold path, as well as the sermons of Gauta himself recorded by contemporaries and collections of the Dhammapada and Jataka. There were collected about 10 thousand sutras, which were attributed to the Buddha himself and his closest disciples.
The Dhammapada contained parables that helped students to penetrate deeper into the essence of the teaching itself. In the Jatakas, which contained stories about the previous incarnations of the Buddha, a historical excursion into the history of the issue itself was given, so to speak. The Jatakis painted a pretty image of the founder of Buddhism and talked about events in his life and the lives of his predecessors. Here they called the virtues that made it possible for an ordinary person to walk the path of perfection: wisdom, generosity, patience, energy, a realistic perception of the world, truthfulness, kindness, decisiveness, optimism and virtue.
The third "basket" - Abhidharma Pitaka - contained philosophical texts that substantiated the teachings of Buddhists.
Entity multiplication
Although initially there were only three baskets of sacred texts, their number has grown significantly over time. Texts were rewritten, and quite actively. Pupils who had completed a course at the monasteries returned to their homeland and wrote down texts in their own language. Thus, several editions of the Buddha's texts appeared. For example, the Pali language version used in Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The Chinese edition of the Tripitaka is recognized by the Buddhists of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Tibetan edition - by Buddhists of Mongolia and Tibet, as well as Buryats and other peoples living in Russia.
In addition to these fundamental texts, various schools of Buddhism recognize others, which for them also shine with a halo of holiness. Some of these texts attributed to Buddha are downright difficult to understand. The Teachings on Perfect Wisdom belong to this kind of late Buddhist texts, which, due to their incredible complexity, cannot in any way be attributed to the statements of the Buddha himself.
The existing Buddhist sutras are usually correlated with the name of the Buddha himself, although, of course, they differ significantly from each other in the time of writing and in language. In order to make it easier to navigate among the ancient texts, the sutras were conditionally divided into two types: the final meaning and those requiring interpretation. There were no problems with the sutras of the first type - they were clear and simple. There were problems with sutras of the second type. They demanded comment. However, there was disagreement among Buddhists as to what type of sutras should be assigned.
Moreover, some adherents of the purity of Buddhism argued that the Buddha never uttered a single word from the moment of his conversion until his death. And the sutras arose as a result of communication of people with the silent Buddha - they received their answers not through words. It is not for nothing that one of the images of Buddha poorly understood by Europeans is the Buddha with thousands of hands, at the ends of which there is an eye - a symbol of the fact that the Buddha hears and sees everyone and gives everyone answers to all their questions.
Bodhisattvas and incarnations
The Tripitaka as a text has never claimed to be exclusive. Buddhists are convinced that besides Gautama, there were other Buddhas, that is, people who attained enlightenment. There were Buddhas before his arrival, and there will be after him. It's just that each of the bodhisattvas comes into the world with some one prevailing quality.
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara symbolizes compassion, Bodhisattva Manjushri - wisdom. To achieve their goal, they are able to generate their own kind. But only a person himself is able to change the world for the better: relying on the teachings of Buddhism, he can walk the path of a bodhisattva and achieve an understanding of the purpose of all that exists. By changing themselves, people change the world.
Although the disciples of Buddha Shakyamuni promoted his teachings, for a long time the texts were oral - that is, they were simply memorized. And only about 80 BC they were recorded. For this reason, it is very, very difficult to accurately date the original texts. Likewise, it is difficult to attribute the Tripitaka texts to one or another group - the ancient Pali tradition or the Tibetan-Chinese tradition. Over the long years of existence, these texts have formed a single block.
Moreover, Buddhists did their best to create a unified collection, excluding random texts from their everyday life. So, in 1871 in Myanmar, they convened 2,400 leading learned monks and, after analyzing many texts, created a single text of the Tripitaka. The task of the monks was to separate the words of the students and followers of Buddhism from the words spoken by the Buddha himself. It was a very difficult task, but the monks coped with it. In order for the text they approved to be, so to speak, eternal, it was carved on 729 stone slabs, which have since been kept in the Kutodo Paya temple complex. It is in this temple that the most correct version of the Tripitaka is today.
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 34, Nikolay Kotomkin