What is the Pali canon, and why do we read the Majjhima Nikaya in particular? How far can these texts be trusted?

The Pali canon (Tipiṭaka, “three baskets”) is the canonical collection of Theravada, preserved in the Pali language. The canon consists of three parts-baskets:

• the basket of suttas (Sutta Piṭaka) - the collection of discourses given by the Buddha or by other monks;
• the basket of the monastic code (Vinaya Piṭaka) - the rule with the stories of how each precept appeared, sections on the structure of the community and its procedures (Khandhaka), and a late reference compendium (Parivāra);
• the basket of systematised teaching (Abhidhamma Piṭaka) - a technical analysis of the material of the sutta basket; it is assigned to a later layer than the sutta corpus, though early versions may have taken shape quite early.

The Sutta Piṭaka, in turn, consists of five books, the so-called Nikayas:

• Digha Nikaya - 34 long discourses;
• Majjhima Nikaya - 152 discourses of middle length;
• Samyutta Nikaya - thousands of short suttas grouped by themes, persons and doctrinal headings;
• Anguttara Nikaya - suttas in numerical groups, from one item up to eleven;
• Khuddaka Nikaya - a miscellaneous collection with the Dhammapada, the Sutta Nipata, the Theragatha and other texts; its contents differ between Theravadin recensions.

The first four Nikayas, together with their parallels in the Chinese and Sanskrit versions of the canon, form the main core of the early Buddhist texts. Not everything inside them is of the same age, though - there are also much later additions.

Why the Majjhima

The middle length of the suttas makes it possible to read one in a single evening. And the protagonists are of all kinds - brahmins, ascetics of other schools, kings, monks, doubting lay people; alongside doctrine there are descriptions of practice and biographical episodes.

Translations

The club relies on the English translation from Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi (The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Ñāṇamoli’s draft translation edited by Bodhi, with his introduction and notes) and on Bhikkhu Sujato’s open translation on SuttaCentral. In Russian the main corpus is SV’s translations on SuttaCentral and theravada.ru; they are made from Bhikkhu Bodhi’s English translation.

How far can the texts be trusted

All Buddhist texts were transmitted orally for several centuries - in lineages of specialist reciters (bhāṇaka) and through group recitation; they are believed to have been first written down in Sri Lanka, according to the Lankan chronicles, at the end of the 1st century BCE. The repetitions and set formulas in the suttas are at once a mnemonic device and a mark of oral transmission. This approach makes it possible to keep the original formulations intact, but divergences between transmission lineages are, of course, still possible. Modern scholars often compare the Sanskrit version of the same suttas with the parallel Chinese collection, the Madhyama Agama (Taishō 26, translated in 397-398 CE).

Accordingly, one can distinguish different levels of trust in the Buddhist texts of the Pali canon. The preservation of a large part of the shared early material across independent transmission lineages is quite high (judging by textual comparison). But such comparison cannot precisely reconstruct the teaching as it existed before the early Buddhist schools split. Nor is it possible to establish how verbatim the words of the historical Buddha are conveyed in any particular sutta (by historical and comparative methods).

Where to read: MN 95, AN 4.180.