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The Tripiṭaka (Sanskrit त्रिपिटक, lit. three baskets), Tipiṭaka (Pāli) is the formal term for a Buddhist canon of scriptures. Many different versions of the canon have existed throughout the Buddhist world, containing an enormous variety of texts. The oldest and most widely-known version is the Pāli Canon of the Theravāda school.

The Tripitaka writings of early schools of Buddhism, which were originally memorized and recited orally by disciples, fall into three general categories and are traditionally classified in three baskets (tri-piṭaka). The following is the most common order.

The first category, the Vinaya Piṭaka, was the code of ethics to be obeyed by the early saṅgha, monks and nuns. According to the scriptural account, these were invented on a day-to-day basis as the Buddha encountered various behavior problems with the monks.

The second category, the Sūtra Piṭaka (literally "basket of threads", Pāli: Sutta Piṭaka), consists primarily of accounts of the Buddha's teachings. The Sūtra Piṭaka has numerous subdivisions: it contains more than 10,000 sūtras.

The third category is the Abhidharma Piṭaka. This is applied to very different collections in different versions of the Tripiṭaka. In the Pāli Canon of the Theravāda there is an Abhidhamma Piṭaka consisting of seven books. An Abhidharma Piṭaka of the Sarvāstivāda school survives, also in seven books, six in Chinese and one in Tibetan. These are different books from the Pali ones though there are some common material and ideas. Another work surviving in Chinese, the Śāriputrābhidharmaśāstra, may be all or part of another Abhidharma Piṭaka. At least some other early schools of Buddhism had Abhidharma Piṭakas, which are now lost.

According to some sources, some early schools of Buddhism had five or seven pitakas.^[1]

In the Mahāyāna a mixed attitude to the term Tripiṭaka developed. On the one hand, a major Mahāyāna scripture, the Lotus Sutra, uses the term to refer to the above literature of the early schools, as distinct from the Mahāyāna's own scriptures, and this usage became quite common in the tradition. On the other hand, the term Tripiṭaka had tended to become synonymous with Buddhist scriptures, and thus continued to be used for the Chinese and Tibetan collections, even though their contents do not really fit the pattern of three piṭakas.^[2] In the Chinese tradition, the scriptures are classified in a variety of ways,^[3] most of which have in fact four or even more piṭakas or other divisions. In the few that attempt to follow a genuine threefold division the term Abhidharma Pitaka is used to refer vaguely to non-canonical literature, whether Indian or Chinese, with only the other two piṭakas being regarded as strictly canonical. In the Tibetan tradition, on the other hand, when attempts are made to explain the application of the term Tripiṭaka to the Kanjur, the Tibetan canon of scripture, the Abhidharma Piṭaka is considered as consisting of the Prajñāpāramitā.

The Chinese form of Tripiṭaka, "Sanzang" (三藏), was sometimes used as an honorary title for a Buddhist monk who has mastered all the Tripiṭaka canons, most notably in the case of the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang, whose pilgrimage to India to study and bring Buddhist text back to China was portrayed in the novel Journey to the West as "Tang Sanzang". Due to the popularity of the novel, the term in "Sanzang" is often erroneously understood as a name of the monk Xuanzang. One such screen version of this is the popular 1979 Monkey (TV series).

• Tipiṭaka (Pali Canon) of the Theravada school.
• Tripiṭaka preserved in the East-Asian Mahayana tradition (Chinese translations):

1. The Āgamas contain the Majjhima Nikāya and Saṃyutta Nikāya of the Sārvāstivāda.
2. The Āgamas contain the Dīgha Nikāya of the Dharmaguptaka.
3. The Āgamas contain the Aṅguttara Nikāya (Ekottara Āgama of the Mahāsaṅghika.
4. The Vinaya Piṭakas of Sārvāstivāda, Mahāsaṅghika, Dharmaguptaka, Mahīśāsaka.
5. Mahāyāna sūtras and Buddhist tantras

• The Mūlasārvāstivādin Vinaya Piṭaka is preserved in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, along with Mahāyāna sūtras and tantras.
• The Gandharan Buddhist texts contains some books and fragments of the Tipiṭaka of (probably) the Dharmaguptaka school.

1. ^ Journal of the Pali Text Society, volume XVI, page 114
2. ^ Mizuno, Essentials of Buddhism, 1972, English version pub Kosei, Tokyo, 1996
3. ^ Nanjio, Catalogue of the Chinese Translations of the Buddhist Tripitaka, Clarendon, Oxford, 1883

Pali Tipitaka:

• Access to Insight has many suttas translated into English
• Pali Canon on-line (in Pali and English)
• Tipitaka Network
• List of Pali Canon Suttas translated into English (ongoing)
• The Pali Tipitaka Project(texts in 7 Asian languages)
• The Sri Lanka Tripitaka Project Pali Canons has a searchable database of the Pali texts
• The Vietnamese Nikaaya(continuing, text in Vitenamese)
• Search in English translations of the Tipitaka

East-Asian tradition:

• English translations of many Mahayana Buddhism texts
• BuddhaNet's eBook Library(English pdfs)
• WWW Database of Chinese Buddhist texts(English index of some East Asian Tripitakas)
• Index of Electronic Buddhist Texts (English index)

Tibetan tradition:

• Kangyur & Tengyur Projects (Tibetan texts)