Buddha's Teachings

by Lord Chalmers

Buddha's Teachings contains a metrical English rendering of an important Buddhist work in Pali named `Sutta-Nipata' with the original text in Romanized version on the opposite page. The Pali Canon, as it has come down to us, is divided into three Pitakas or `baskets', viz. Vinaya-Pitaka Sutta-Pitaka and Abhidhamma-Pitaka. The Sutta-Nipata, translated here, contains an ancient, probably the most ancient, part of the Sutta-Pitaka. It belongs to that portion of the Sutta-Pitaka which is named Khuddaka Nikaya or `Collection of Short Treatises' as distinct from the four long Nikayas called Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta and Anguttara. Of the five Vaggas (or 'books') of the present Sutta-Nipata the fifth stands out from its fellows by reason of its purposeful unity. Whle the Uraga, Maha, Cula and Atthaka Vaggas consist each of a collectioin of independent and unconnected poems (sometimes interspersed with prose) called Suttas, the Parayana aims at a dramatic synthesis. Its prologue and epilogue serve as a setting to the sixteen Questions which elicit Gotama's gradual exposition of the saving 'Way Across'.