Samyutta Nikaya

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Pali Canon
Vinaya Pitaka
Sutta Pitaka (Nikayas)
Abhidhamma Pitaka
See also: Early Buddhist Texts, Agamas

The Samyutta Nikaya (P. Saṁyuttanikāya; "Collection of Connected Discourses") is the third of the five divisions (nikaya) of the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon. According to Bhikkhu Bodhi, this division contains 2,889 discourses (suttas) grouped into five sections (vaggas). Each section is further divided into samyuttas, each of which in turn contains a group of suttas on related topics.

The samyuttas are named according to the topics of the suttas they contain. For example, the Kosala Samyutta (in the Sagatha Vagga) contains suttas concerning King Pasenadi of Kosala; the Vedana Samyutta (in the Salayatana Vagga) contains suttas concerning feeling (vedana); and so on.

Overview

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

The Saṃyutta Nikāya is the third great collection of the Buddha’s discourses in the Sutta Piṭaka of the Pāli Canon, the compilation of texts authorized as the Word of the Buddha by the Theravāda school of Buddhism. Within the Sutta Piṭaka it follows the Dīgha Nikāya and Majjhima Nikāya, and precedes the Aṅguttara Nikāya. Like the other Pāli Nikāyas, the Saṃyutta Nikāya had counterparts in the canonical collections of the other early Buddhist schools, and one such version has been preserved in the Chinese Tripiṭaka, where it is known as the Tsa-a-han-ching. This was translated from the Sanskrit Saṃyuktāgama, which the evidence indicates belonged to the Sarvāstivāda school. Thus, while the Saṃyutta Nikāya ... has its locus within the Theravāda canon, it should never be forgotten that it belongs to a body of texts—called the Nikāyas in the Pāli tradition prevalent in southern Asia and the Āgamas in the Northern Buddhist tradition—which stands at the fountainhead of the entire Buddhist literary heritage. It was on the basis of these texts that the early Buddhist schools established their systems of doctrine and practice, and again it was to these texts that later schools also appealed when formulating their new visions of the Buddha’s way.
As a source of Buddhist doctrine the Saṃyutta Nikāya is especially rich, for in this collection it is precisely doctrinal categories that serve as the primary basis for classifying the Buddha’s discourses. The word saṃyutta means literally “yoked together,” yutta (Skt yukta) being etymologically related to our English “yoked” and saṃ a prefix meaning “together.” The word occurs in the suttas themselves with the doctrinally charged meaning of “fettered” or “bound.” In this sense it is a past participle related to the technical term saṃyojana, “fetter,” of which there are ten that bind living beings to saṃsāra, the round of rebirths. But the word saṃyutta is also used in a more ordinary sense to mean simply things that are joined or “yoked” together, as when it is said, “Suppose, friend, a black ox and a white ox were yoked together by a single harness or yoke” (35:232; S IV 163,12–13). This is the meaning relevant to the present collection of texts. They are suttas—discourses ascribed to the Buddha or to eminent disciples—yoked or connected together. And what connects them, the “harness or yoke” (damena vā yottena vā), are the topics that give their titles to the individual chapters, the saṃyuttas under which the suttas fall.[1]

Divisions

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

The Saṃyutta Nikāya that has come down in the Pāli tradition consists of five major Vaggas, parts or “books” ... Between them, these five volumes contain fifty-six saṃyuttas, chapters based on unifying themes. The longer saṃyuttas are in turn divided into subchapters, also called vaggas, while the smaller saṃyuttas can be considered to consist of a single vagga identical with the saṃyutta itself. Each vagga, in this sense, ideally contains ten suttas, though in actuality the number of suttas in a vagga can range from as few as five to as many as sixty. Thus we find the word vagga, literally “a group,” used to designate both the five major parts of the entire collection and the subordinate sections of the chapters.[1]

The five major divisions are:[1][2]

  1. sagātha-vagga ("Book of verses"), suttas that in the majority of cases contain verses
  2. nidana-vagga ("Book of causation"), suttas that deal primarily with epistemology and psychology
  3. khandha-vagga ("Book of the aggregates"), on the five aggregates
  4. saḷāyatana-vagga ("Book of the six sense-fields"), dealing with the six sources of consciousness
  5. mahā-vagga ("Great book"), which contains suttas on the noble eightfold path, the states of concentration (dhyāna), the establishments of mindfulness (satipatthana), and other important doctrines.

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

The five major Vaggas or “books” of the Saṃyutta Nikāya are constructed according to different principles. The first book, the Sagāthāvagga, is unique in being compiled on the basis of literary genre. As the name of the Vagga indicates, the suttas in this collection all contain gāthās or verses, though it is not the case ... that all suttas in SN containing verses are included in this Vagga. In many suttas of Part I, the prose setting is reduced to a mere framework for the verses, and in the first saṃyutta even this disappears so that the sutta becomes simply an exchange of verses, presumably between the Buddha and an interlocutor. The other four Vaggas contain major saṃyuttas concerned with the main doctrinal themes of early Buddhism, accompanied by minor saṃyuttas spanning a wide diversity of topics. Parts II, III, and IV each open with a large chapter devoted to a theme of paramount importance: respectively, the chain of causation (i.e., dependent origination, in SN 12), the five aggregates (22), and the six internal and external sense bases (35). Each of these Vaggas is named after its opening saṃyutta and also includes one other saṃyutta dealing with another important topic secondary to the main one: in Part II, the elements (14); in Part III, philosophical views (24); and in Part IV, feeling (36). The other saṃyuttas in each of these collections are generally smaller and thematically lighter, though within these we can also find texts of great depth and power.
Part V tackles themes that are all of prime importance, namely, the various groups of training factors which, in the post-canonical period, come to be called the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment (sattatiṃsa bodhipakkhiyā dhammā). The Vagga concludes with a saṃyutta on the original intuition around which the entire Dhamma revolves, the Four Noble Truths. Hence this book is called the Mahāvagga, the Great Book, though at one point it might have also been called the Maggavagga, the Book of the Path (and indeed the Sanskrit version translated into Chinese was so named).[1]

Translations

Full translations

Selections

Correspondence with the Saṃyukta Āgama

The Samyutta Nikaya corresponds to the Samyukta Agama found in the Sutra Pitikas of various Sanskritic early Buddhists schools, fragments of which survive in Sanskrit and in Tibetan translation. A complete Chinese translation from the Sarvāstivādin recension appears in the Chinese Buddhist canon, where it is known as the Zá Ahánjīng (雜阿含經); meaning "the mixed agama". A comparison of the Sarvāstivādin, Kāśyapīya, and Theravadin texts reveals a considerable consistency of content, although each recension contains sutras/suttas not found in the others.[4] The Collation and Annotation of Saṃyuktāgama[5] (《<雜阿含經>校釋》,Chinese version) makes further comparison.

Bhikkhu Sujato states that the remarkable congruence of the various recensions suggests that the Samyutta Nikaya/Saṃyukta Āgama was the only collection to be finalized in terms of both structure and content in the pre-sectarian period.[6]

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Bodhi 2000a, Introduction.
  2. ↑ Buswell & Lopez 2014, s.v. Saṁyuttanikāya.
  3. ↑ The BPS anthology was published in three parts, edited by John D. Ireland (1981), Bhikkhu Ñanananda (1983) and Maurice O'C. Walshe (1985).
  4. ↑ A Dictionary of Buddhism, by Damien Keown, Oxford University Press: 2004
  5. ↑ The Collation and Annotation of Saṃyuktāgama, by Wang Jianwei and Jin Hui, East China Normal University Press: 2014
  6. ↑ Bhikku Sujato, A History of Mindfulness: How Insight Worsted Tranquility in the Satipatthana Sutta pgs 31, 37-52

Sources

External links

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