Instead of a book, it's a shelf!
Extracts from " Good Question Good Answer " by Venerable S Dhammika
QUESTION: Nearly all religions have some kind of holy writings or Bible. What is the Buddhist holy book?
ANSWER:
The sacred book of Buddhism is called the Tipitaka. It is written in an
ancient Indian language called Pali which is very close to the language
that the Buddha himself spoke. The Tipitaka is a very large book. The
English translation of it takes up nearly 40 volumes.
QUESTION: What does the name Tipitaka mean?
ANSWER:
It is made up of two Pali words, ti means ‘three’ and pitaka means
‘basket.’ The first part of the name refers to the fact that the
Buddhist scriptures consist of three sections. The first section, called
the Sutta Pitaka contains all the Buddha’s discourses as well as some
by his enlightened disciples. The type of material in the Sutta Pitaka
is very diverse which allows it to communicate the truths that the
Buddha taught to different types of people. Many of the Buddha’s
discourses are in the form of sermons while others are in the form of
dialogues. Other parts like the Dhammapada present the Buddha’s
teachings through the medium of poetry. The Jatakas, to take another
example, consist of delightful stories in which the main characters are
often animals. The second section of the Tipitaka is the Vinaya Pitaka.
This contains the rules and procedures for monks and nuns, advice on
monastic administration and procedure and the early history of the
monastic order. The last section is called the Abhidhamma Pitaka. This
is a complex and sophisticated attempt to analyze and classify all the
constituents that make up the individual. Although the Abhidhamma is
somewhat later than the first two sections of the Tipitaka, it contains
nothing that contradicts them.
Now for the word ‘pitaka.’ In
ancient India construction workers used to move building materials from
one place to another by means of a relay of baskets. They would put the
baskets on their heads, walk some distance to the next worker, pass it
to them, and he would repeat the process. Writing was known in the
Buddha’s time but as a medium it was considered less reliable than the
human memory. A book could rot in the monsoon damp or be eaten by white
ants but a person’s memory could last as long as they lived.
Consequently, monks and nuns committed all the Buddha's teachings to
memory and passed them on to each other just as construction workers
passed earth and bricks to each other in baskets. This is why the three
sections of the Buddhist scriptures are called baskets. After being
preserved in this manner for several hundred years the Tipitaka was
finally written down in about 100 BC in Sri Lanka.
