The Āgamas
The northern recension of the early Buddhist texts and the subject of much recent text-critical scholarship.
Table of Contents
Articles (12)
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Any kind of study in this field [of Buddhism] remains incomplete unless the materials of the Chinese Āgamas are tapped and utilized.
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at an earlier time references to the four noble truths in this and other discourses may have been without the qualification ‘noble’
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An example of how the early Buddhist texts changed (and didn’t) during the course of oral recitation, and a lovely discourse on how to have an auspicious night.
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[on] the impact of oral transmission on this material; the notion of a parallel and difficulties in applying this notion; the advantage of approaching the category of a parallel with the help of the Buddhist four-fold logic; and the potential of comparative studies.
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It is this potential of the Chinese Āgamas as a supplement to the Pali discourses to which I would like to draw attention with the present article, taking up a few examples from the first group of fifty discourses in the Majjhima Nikāya.
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⭐ Recommended
Placing the Pali discourses and their counterparts in the Chinese Āgamas side by side often brings to light an impressive degree of agreement, even down to rather minor details. This close agreement testifies to the emphasis on verbatim recall in the oral transmission of the early discourses. In this respect the early Buddhist oral tradition forms a class of its own in the ambit of oral literature
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Not all Āgamas are early. In this paper, Bingenheimer shows us how two sutras without parallels in the Pāli can be shown as likely to be later additions to the canon.
Audio/Video (1)
Booklets (1)
Monographs (5)
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in what follows I briefly survey the four main Chinese Āgamas. In the first of the chapters that follow this introduction, I try to place the early discourses in historical perspective. An assessment of their value as testimonies for early Buddhist thought serves as a foundation for the comparative studies found in this and the other three volumes.
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revised versions of articles published previously. Each study is based on a partial or complete translation of the Saṃyukta-āgama discourse in question, followed by an examination of some aspects that I felt to be of further interest.
Papers (1)
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the term Mūla-sarvāstivāda can serve a purpose as a designation for a specific, identifiable Āgama lineage of textual transmission
Reference Shelf (5)
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A website hosting several new, free translations of the Chinese Āgamas.