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WorkGautama Buddha

Sutta-Nipāta

Seventy-odd poems and dialogues, some of them counted among the oldest Buddhist compositions, in which the sage wanders alone and keeps out of quarrels over views.

by Gautama Buddha383 passages held

  • English, a translation held here, and your language
  • German, a translation held here
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Original language
Pali

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Overview

Some time in the third century BCE the emperor Aśoka had a short inscription carved at Bairāṭ, in what is now Rajasthan, urging monks, nuns and lay followers to study a list of texts by name. Scholars have matched several of those names, among them the "verses of the sage" and the "questions of Upatissa", to poems now in the Sutta-Nipāta, though not every match is agreed. The title means "the section of discourses": a mixed anthology, mostly in verse, in five chapters, prized because parts of it are counted among the oldest Buddhist compositions that survive. Two of its chapters carry most of that claim. The Aṭṭhakavagga, the "chapter of eights", and the Pārāyanavagga, "the way to the far shore", have an old commentary of their own, the Niddesa, which the canon itself includes, and the Japanese scholar Hajime Nakamura held that both chapters already existed in the Buddha's lifetime. Several poems of the Aṭṭhakavagga turn on quarrels: the sage they describe holds to no view worth fighting over and lets go of what he calls his own. In the Pārāyanavagga, sixteen young brahmins, sent by their old teacher Bāvarī, come to put their questions to the Buddha one by one. The first chapter holds the "Rhinoceros" poem, with its refrain that one should wander alone like a rhinoceros; a version in the Gāndhārī language surfaced in 1994 among manuscripts from ancient Gandhāra. Like the rest of the canon, the book was handed down orally and written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE. Viggo Fausbøll, the Danish scholar who had edited the Dhammapada in 1855, published his English translation in 1881, and Karl Eugen Neumann's German appeared in Munich in 1911.

Key concepts

Who is the muni, the sage, in these poems?

The muni is the one who has let go of home, possessions and every view, and is no longer moved by what moves others. The Muni poem gathers images for him: like a lion that does not tremble at noises, like the wind not caught in a net, like a lotus not soiled by the water it grows in, leading others and not led by them. The word means 'silent one'.

What makes someone a brahmin in the Sutta-Nipāta?

Conduct, not descent. Grass and trees, worms, ants and snakes, the Buddha tells two young brahmins, carry marks of their species, but among human beings no mark of birth divides one kind from another. People are named by what they do: a farmer, a trader, a soldier. In the same way the name brahmin belongs to whoever lives as a brahmin should, free of craving, violence and pride.

What is mettā, the friendly mind?

Mettā is goodwill extended to every living being without limit: weak or strong, seen or unseen, near or far, born or still to be born. The Metta poem asks for it to be cultivated as a mother at the risk of her own life watches over her only child, so that the wish 'may all beings be happy' fills the mind above, below and across, whether standing, walking or lying down.

What is the stream the brahmin students ask how to cross?

It is the stream of birth, old age, sorrow and lamentation, the round of lives driven by craving. In the last chapter, sixteen students of the brahmin Bāvarī put their questions one after another, and the answers return to one point: whoever has put away craving for the world of the senses has crossed to the other shore, free of doubt. The far shore is the end of suffering.

Why does fear arise from the stick?

Because violence is where fear begins, not where it ends. A poem in the chapter of eights opens on this line and tells of watching people kill one another, struggling like fish in a shrinking pool. Whoever grasps a weapon to be safe is now among those who strike and are struck. Laying down the stick, in thought as in act, is the way out of that fear.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

No View Worth a Quarrel

Every school calls its own teaching perfect and its rival's wretched, and the argument never ends. The chapter of eights asks what a wise person does with a view, if not fight for it.

Contentions and disputes, the poems say, spring from what is dear: people defend a view as they defend a possession, seek praise for it and call themselves the only experts. A person is not made pure by holding the right view, or by knowledge alone. The sage these poems describe has cut the knot of attachment, does not say 'I am infinitely pure', regards no teaching as the best and so has nothing to quarrel over. Not holding a view is not a cleverer view: it is the end of clinging.

  • non-attachment
  • attachment
  • wisdom
  • equanimity
  • knowledge
  • desire

Enter a dialogue

Alone, to the Far Shore

Home, family and companions hold a person fast, and death carries everyone off while relatives watch. These poems ask what it takes to cross over and leave it all behind.

The rhinoceros poem's refrain tells the seeker to wander alone like a rhinoceros, wishing not even for a son. Māra comes to the fasting Gotama with soft words and an army whose divisions are lust, discontent, hunger and thirst. Sixteen young brahmins sent by their teacher Bāvarī ask how the wise cross the stream of birth, old age and sorrow, and Mogharāja is told to look on the world as void, so that death will not find him. Weeping, says another poem, brings no peace.

  • renunciation
  • solitude
  • liberation
  • awakening
  • craving
  • cessation
  • death
  • asceticism

Enter a dialogue

Noble by Deeds, Not by Birth

Brahmins claimed purity by descent, by sacrifice and by what they would not eat. The poems ask what really makes a person noble or defiled.

Not by birth does one become an outcast, not by birth a brahmin: by deeds. A brahmin ploughing his field is told that the Buddha ploughs too, with faith as the seed and understanding as his plough. What defiles a person is cruelty, fraud and deceit, not the eating of flesh. Ask not about descent but about conduct, for fire is born from any wood. And the friendly mind is to be boundless, as a mother at the risk of her life watches over her only child.

  • caste
  • ritual
  • ethics
  • ethical conduct
  • virtue
  • generosity
  • compassion
  • karma

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
383
distinct concepts
346
by passages held, corpus-wide
#194

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “liberation” and “non-attachment”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 76 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
liberationnon-attachment44
liberationsuffering29
cravingliberation26
desireliberation25
liberationwisdom23
desirenon-attachment21
non-attachmentrenunciation16
liberationrenunciation15
cravingnon-attachment13
desiresuffering13
non-attachmentwisdom13
renunciationsuffering13
cravingsuffering12
generosityliberation12
non-attachmentsuffering12
desirerenunciation11
renunciationwisdom9
cravingrenunciation7
generositywisdom7
cravingwisdom6
generositynon-attachment6
generosityrenunciation6
sufferingwisdom6
desirewisdom5
cravingdesire3
desiregenerosity2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1892 Buddhistische Anthologie

    A book assembled by its translator, not a book of the canon, and the start of a sequence: Neumann went on to translate the Dhammapada in 1893 and the verses of the monks and nuns in 1899.

     DE
  2. Dialogues of the Buddha (Dīgha Nikāya)

    Of the five collections of the Buddha's discourses in the Pāli Canon, this one comes first and holds the longest pieces. Many of them stage an encounter: a brahmin, a king or a rival ascetic arrives with a question.

     EN
  3. Psalms of the Early Buddhists I: Psalms of the Sisters (Therīgāthā)

    The companion to the Theragāthā, the verses of the elder monks, and less than half its length.

     EN
  4. Psalms of the Early Buddhists II: Psalms of the Brethren (Theragāthā)

    Twenty-one chapters ordered by the length of each poem, from single verses up to Vaṅgīsa's seventy-one, ascribed to the Buddha's first monks.

     EN
  5. Sutta-Nipāta you are here DEEN
  6. The Book of the Kindred Sayings (Saṃyutta Nikāya)

    Built by topic rather than by length, unlike the two collections before it: here causation, the aggregates of a person and the six senses each receive a book of their own.

     PIEN
  7. The Dhammapada (Dhammapada)

    The best known of the canon's verse anthologies, filed with the miscellaneous fifth collection. Many of its verses recur elsewhere in the canon, and several early schools kept their own version.

     EN
  8. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Majjhima Nikāya)

    Where the Dīgha stages debates, this collection shows the Buddha at work as a teacher, with monks, householders and ascetics. Neumann's version, the first complete one in a European language, keeps the German spelling of the 1890s, with forms such as giebt and Gleichniss.

     DE
  9. The Udāna: Inspired Utterances of the Buddha (Udāna)

    Prose scenes, each with its verse: a mixed form among the books of the miscellaneous fifth collection, where the Dhammapada and the Theragāthā are verse alone.

     DE
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