agama/Nikaya

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?GAMA/NIK?YA

The terms ?gama and Nik?ya denote the subdivisions of the S?trapi?aka (P?li, Suttapi?aka; Basket of Discourses) within the canon. ?gama has the basic meaning of (received) tradition, canonical text, and (scriptural) authority, while Nik?ya means both collection and group. Nik?ya also denotes an ordination lineage that allows the joint performance of legal acts of the Buddhist order (sa?gha), a meaning that will not be explored in this entry.

It is not known when monks started to gather individual discourses of the Buddha into structured collections. According to tradition, the Buddha's discourses were already collected by the time of the first council, held shortly after the Buddha's death in order to establish and confirm the discourses as "authentic" words of the Buddha (buddhavacana). Scholars, however, see the texts as continuously growing in number and size from an unknown nucleus, thereby undergoing various changes in language and content. For at least the first century, and probably for two or three centuries, after the Buddha's death, the texts were passed down solely by word of mouth, and the preservation and intact transmission of steadily growing collections necessitated the introduction of ordering principles. The preserved collections reveal traces of an earlier structure that classified the texts into three, four, nine, or even twelve sections (a?ga), but this organizing structure was superseded by the Tripi?aka scheme of arranging texts into the three (tri) baskets (pi?aka) of discipline (vinaya), discourses (s?tras), and systematized teachings (abhidharma). All Buddhist schools whose literature has been preserved divided the S?trapi?aka further into sections called ?gama or Nik?ya. Neither term is school-specific; the notion that the Therav?da school used the term Nik?ya while other schools used ?gama is justified neither by P?li nor by Sanskrit sources.

There are either four or five ?gamas and Nik?yas considered canonical by the various mainstream Buddhist schools: the D?rgh?gama (P?li, D?ghanik?ya; Collection of Long Discourses); the Madhyam?gama (P?li, Majjhimanik?ya; Collection of Discourses of Middle Length); the Sa?yukt?gama (P?li, Sa?yuttanik?ya; Connected Discourses); the Ekottar(ik)?gama (P?li, A?guttaranik?ya; Discourses Increasing by One); and the K?udrak?gama (P?li, Khuddhakanik?ya; Collection of Small Texts). Some schools do not accept a K?udraka section as part of the S?trapi?aka; others classify it as a separate pi?aka. The sequence of the five (or four) sections varies, but if included, the K?udraka always comes last. The names refer to the ordering principle of each section: the D?rgha (long) contains the longest discourses; the Madhyama (middle) contains those of medium-length; and the Sa?yukta (connected) contains shorter s?tras connected by their themes. The Ekottarika (Growing by one) or A?guttara (Increasing number of items) comprise discourses arranged in ascending order according to numbered sets of terms, from s?tras treating one term up to those dealing with groups of ten or more. The contents of the K?udraka (small texts) vary significantly from version to version: Most of the works that seem to form its nucleus are composed in verse and apparently belong to the oldest strata of the canon. Some of them, such as the Dhammapada, rank among the best known Buddhist texts.

It is not known how many versions of the S?trapi?aka were once transmitted by the various schools in India. Equally unknown is the number of languages and dialects used for this purpose. At present, only the P?li Suttapi?aka of the Therav?da school is completely preserved. Four ?gamas are available in Chinese translation: the D?rgha, the Madhyama, the Sa?yukta, with three translations, two of them incomplete, and the Ekottarika. These were translated from the collections of different schools: The D?rgh?gama probably belongs to the Dharmaguptaka, the Madhyam?gama and Sa?yukt?gama to the (M?la)Sarv?stiv?dins, and the Ekottarik?gama to the Mah?s??ghika school.

In the early twentieth century, numerous fragments of Sanskrit s?tra manuscripts were found in Central Asia, enabling scholars to recover at least a small part of the S?trapi?aka of the (M?la)Sarv?stiv?dins. Later, fragments of the Ekottarik?gama of the same school came to light among the Gilgit finds. Recent manuscript finds from Afghanistan and Pakistan also contain many s?tra fragments from the scriptures of at least two schools, the (M?la)Sarv?stiv?dins and probably the Mah?s??ghikas. Most notable among them is a manuscript of the D?rgh?gama of the (M?la)Sarv?stiv?dins. Unlike colophons of vinaya texts, those of single s?tras or s?tra collections never mention schools, and this often renders a definite school ascription difficult. School affiliation of ?gama texts may have been less important than modern scholars tend to believe.

The different versions of the S?trapi?aka are by no means unanimous with regard to the number and type of s?tras included in each section. To give one example: The D?ghanik?ya of the Therav?da school contains thirty-four texts, while the D?rgh?gama in Chinese translation contains only thirty. In the incompletely preserved D?rgh?gama of the (M?la)Sarv?stiv?dins, however, forty-seven texts are so far attested. Only twenty of them have a corresponding text in the Chinese D?rgh?gama, and only twenty-four correspond to texts in the P?li version. For eight of them, a parallel text is found in the Majjhimanik?ya of the P?li; at least four have no parallel at all. The agreement between the different versions of a s?tra varies significantly. Versions may be close in some passages and loose in others. Often a considerable part of a s?tra consists of formulaic passages, and the wording of these formulas is version specific. Further differences may be found in the sequence of passages, in the names of places and persons, and also in doctrine. All this indicates a common origin, followed by a long period of separate transmissions with independent redactional changes.

There are many examples of text duplicates in two sections of the same S?trapi?aka. For example, the Satipa??h?na-sutta (Foundation of Mindfulness) of the P?li canon is contained in both the D?gha- and the Majjhimanik?ya. This may be an indication of a separate transmission for each ?gama/Nik?ya in earlier times, another indication being terms like D?ghabh??aka (reciter of the D?gha section) to refer to the respective specialist during the phase of oral transmission in the P?li tradition. At least in the case of the M?lasarv?stiv?dins, many s?tras are also duplicated in their Vinaya.

When growth and redactional changes of the various collections came to an end, they began to form what can best be described as part of a canon of the respective schools. However, very little is known about the use or ritual and educational functions of the collections during early times. Because of their status as scriptural authority, quotations from the s?tras are numerous in the commentarial literature of the various schools. Certain s?tras also continued to be transmitted individually or in fixed selections designed for specific religious purposes, and it appears that such texts played a much more important role in the life of Buddhists than the complete collections. Not all the s?tras were collected as ?gamas/Nik?yas; the Mah?y?na s?tras, for instance, never came to be included in such a classification scheme.

Bibliography

Hinüber, Oskar von. A Handbook of P?li Literature. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1996.

Lamotte, Étienne. History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins to the Saka Era (1958), tr. Sara Webb-Boin. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Université catholique de Louvain, Institut orientaliste, 1988.

Mayeda, Egaku. "Japanese Studies on the School of the Chinese ?gamas." In Zur Schulzugehörigkeit von Werken der H?nay?na-Literatur, 2 vols., ed. Heinz Bechert. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1985–1987.

Mizuno, K?gen. Buddhist s?tras: Origin, Development, Transmission. Tokyo: K?sei, 1982.

Jens-Uwe Hartmann

Encyclopedia of Buddhism