Introduction to the Itivuttaka · 莲华归心开放中文佛学资料库

- suttas - - evening talks - short morning talks - lectures - guided meditations - talk collections - other themes - chants - - - - à¹à¸à¸¢ - Franā§ais - Espaā±ol - - Portuguāªs - Ð ÑÑÑÐºÐ¸Ð¹ - - - Ð£ÐºÑÐ°ÑÐ½ÑÑÐºÐ° Submit Search - Home - Suttas - KN - Iti - Introduction ## Browse Suttas Go to Itivuttaka index Iti index ## Introduction to the Itivuttaka ## Introduction THE ITIVUTTAKA, a collection of 112 short discourses, takes its name from the statement at the beginning of each of its discourses: this (iti) was said (vuttaṃ) by the Blessed One. The collection as a whole is attributed to a laywoman named Khujjuttarṅ, who worked in the palace of King Udena of Kosambī as a servant to one of his queens, Sṅmṅvati. Because the Queen could not leave the palace to hear the Buddhaâs discourses, Khujjuttarṅ went in her place, memorized what the Buddha said, and then returned to the palace to teach the Queen and her 500 ladies-in-waiting. For her efforts, the Buddha cited Khujjuttarṅ as the foremost of his laywomen disciples in terms of her learning. She was also an effective teacher: when the inner apartments of the palace later burned down, killing the Queen and her entourage, the Buddha commented (in Udṅna 7:10) that all of the women had reached at least the first stage of awakening. The name of the Itivuttaka is included in the standard early list of the nine divisions of the Buddhaâs teachings–a list that predates the organization of the Pali Canon as we now know it. Itâs impossible to determine, though, the extent to which the extant Pali Itivuttaka corresponds to the Itivuttaka mentioned in that list. The Chinese canon contains a translation of an Itivuttaka, attributed to Hsā¼an-tsang, that strongly resembles the text of the Pali Itivuttaka, the major difference being that parts of the Group of Threes and all of the Group of Fours in the Pali are missing in Hsā¼an-tsangâs translation. Either these parts were later additions to the text that found their way into the Pali but not into the Sanskrit version translated by Hsā¼an-tsang, or the Sanskrit text was incomplete, or Hsā¼an-tsangâs translation–which dates from the last months of his life–was left unfinished. The extant Pali Itivuttaka is composed of 112 itivuttakas (to distinguish between individual itivuttakas and the collection as a whole, the standard practice is to capitalize the latter and not the former.) The collection is organized into four groups, according to the number of items treated in each itivuttaka. Thus the Group of Ones contains itivuttakas treating one item; the Group of Twos, those treating two items, and so on up to four. In this way, the Itivuttaka resembles the Aṃguttara Nikṅya in its method of organization. And the resemblance goes beyond that. Many of the suttas in the Aṃguttara are composed of a prose passage followed by a verse summary of whatâs given in the prose. This was apparently one of the Buddhaâs techniques for helping his listeners remember his message. In the Itivuttaka, all of the passages follow this pattern: a prose passage, spoken by the Buddha to the monks, followed by a verse, also attributed to the Buddha, summarizing the prose passage. However, more often than not, the verses in the itivuttakas add extra information not covered in the prose. In most cases, the extra information is fairly minor, but in a few (such as Â§63), itâs quite extensive. Because the prose passages are, in many instances, extremely short, this raises the question of whether they report entire discourses or simply gives the gist of those discourses. If just the gist, then perhaps the added information in the verse was actually treated in the full prose of the original discourse. More than any other collection in the Canon, the Itivuttaka gives a sense of the Buddhaâs ability to recycle his material when composing verses. In some cases, entire verses are repeated (e.g., Â§15 and Â§105); in others, a verse composed on one topic is fitted to another topic simply with the change of a word or two (e.g., Â§Â§1-6). In still others, repeated cadences and lines help to round out verses on a variety of topics (Â§Â§52, 54, 56). Although this tendency may seem to indicate a lack of originality, it is not a flaw. It eases the task of listeners trying to memorize blocks of material, and points out parallels between subjects that otherwise might not be clear. In terms of style, the Itivuttaka differs from its neighbors in the Khuddaka Nikṅya–such as the Dhammapada and Udṅna–in being less obviously shaped by literary considerations. Most of the prose and verse passages are straightforwardly didactic, and so the collection as a whole does not convey a strong literary "savor" (rasa), the aesthetic experience of an emotion that people in ancient India sought in literary works. However, the collection does contain occasional traces of a literary sensibility. As an overall organizing principle, the final itivuttaka in each of the four groups conveys the astoun