After the Buddha's passing (around the fifth to fourth century BCE), his disciples compiled his teachings during a council of "elders" or senior monks in Vesali, known as Vaishali in present-day Bihar. These compilations were collectively called the Tipitaka, or the "three baskets," as they held different types of texts.
The Tipitaka was initially transmitted orally and later transcribed into written form. It was categorized based on length and subject matter. The Vinaya Pitaka contained rules and regulations for those who joined the monastic order, the Sutta Pitaka included the Buddha's teachings, and the Abhidhamma Pitaka dealt with philosophical matters. Each pitaka comprised several individual texts, and over time, Buddhist scholars wrote commentaries on these texts.
As Buddhism spread to new regions like Sri Lanka, additional texts, such as the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa, were composed, focusing on regional histories of Buddhism and containing biographies of the Buddha. Some of the oldest texts were recorded in Pali, while later compositions were in Sanskrit. As Buddhism expanded to East Asia, pilgrims like Fa Xian and Xuan Zang journeyed from China to India in search of texts, which they later translated upon their return to their homeland. Indian Buddhist teachers also undertook long journeys, carrying texts to disseminate the Buddha's teachings in faraway lands.
For centuries, Buddhist texts were meticulously preserved in manuscripts within monasteries across various parts of Asia. In recent times, modern translations have been prepared from texts written in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan languages, enabling wider access to the timeless wisdom of Buddhism. |
