Chinese Tripiṭaka

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Chinese Tripiṭaka (Chin., San-ts'ang, ‘Triple Treasury’, or Ta Ts'ang-ching, ‘Great Treasury of Scriptures’). The collection of Buddhist scriptures in Chinese. It contains versions of most of the texts found in the Tripiṭaka with the addition of Mahāyāna sūtras, commentaries, histories, biographies, encyclopaedias, and even some non-Buddhist writings. The number of texts is not fixed. Various editions have appeared since the 1st printed edn. in 10th cent. CE. The most commonly used is the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō (Tokyo, 1924–9 and reprs.) containing 2,184 texts in 55 vols. In 1982 the State Council of the Peoples' Republic of China established the Chinese Tripitaka Editorial Bureau, charged with producing a new version, which is projected to contain 4,100 texts in 220 vols.