The Ghandaran (in Gāndhāri) Buddhist texts are the oldest manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century CE. They are written in Gāndhāri,
and are possibly the oldest extant Indic texts altogether. They were
sold to European and Japanese institutions and individuals, and are
currently being recovered and studied by several universities. The
Gandhāran texts are in a considerably deteriorated form (their survival
alone is extraordinary), but educated guesses about reconstruction have
been possible in several cases using both modern preservation techniques
and more traditional textual scholarship, comparing previously known Pali and Sankrit
versions of texts. Other Gandhāran Buddhist texts—"several and perhaps
many"—have been found over the last two centuries, but lost or destroyed.
The texts are attributed to the Dharmaguptaka
sect by Richard Salomon, the leading scholar in the field,
and the British Library scrolls "represent a random but reasonably
representative fraction of what was probably a much larger set of texts
preserved in the library of a monastery of the Dharmaguptaka sect in
Nagarāhāra."
(http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=1673A42600D30B6545689A743082C31D.journals?fromPage=online&aid=5670368)
The Nikayas and the Agamas are the early Buddhist suttras which contain what the Buddha had taught for 45 years, including His fundamental teachings about the Four Noble Truths, Dependent Origination, and No Self. Many Buddhist scholars and historians usually consider these suttras the most authentic and reliable sources of what the Buddha actually taught.
After the Second Buddhist Council (100 years after the Buddha's demise), the first two schools Sthaviravada/Sthaviravadin (Thuong toa/Truong lao bo) and Mahasamghika (Dai chung bo) of the original Sangha continued to rely on these suttras to disseminate Buddhism orally. Later, these first two early schools split into further divisions, and ended up numbering, traditionally, about 18 or 20 schools.
The Sthaviras later divided into other schools such as the Sarvastivada (Nhat thiet huu bo)
school and the Vibhajjavada
(Phân biệt thuyết bộ, Sanskrit:
Vibhajyavāda) school. The
resultant Vibhajjavāda branch gave rise to a number of schools such as the
Tāmraparnīya (later called Theravada
), the Dharmaguptara
school, the Mahisasaka
school, and the Kasyapiya
school. The Mahasamghika was divided into: Ekavyaharaka, Lokottaravada, Bahusrutiya, Prajnaptivada, and Caitika.
The five Nikayas were not recorded in any written form even though they had been thoroughly reviewed and considered complete by the Tamrasatiyah (Đồng diệp bộ) sect, which belonged to the Vibhajyavada (Phân biệt thuyết bộ, the name of the Theravada school at the time) during the Third Buddhist Council. These suttras continued to be orally disseminated in Sri Lanka by Mahinda until the Fourth Theravada Buddhist Council (83 BC), when they were recorded on palm leaves for the first time.
According to Robert Thurman, the term Nikaya Buddhism was
coined by Dr. Masatoshi Nagatomi (Harvard University), in order to find a more acceptable and more neutral way than "Hinayana" to refer to the early Buddhist schools and their practice. Nikaya is also
a term used in Theravada Buddhism to refer to a subschool or subsect within
Theravada.
The five Nikayas suttras include:
[Trường bộ kinh (Digha - Nikàya), Trung bộ kinh (Majhima - Nikàya), Tương ưng bộ kinh (Samyutta - Nikàya), Tăng chi bộ kinh (Anguttara - Nikàya), Tiểu bộ kinh (Khuddaka - Nikàya)]
During the Fourth (Mahayana) Buddhist Council, which took place around the
second century AD under King Kanishkha, the Agamas, the Vinayas, and
some Buddhist treatises were recorded in written form for the first
time.
Āgama refers to a collection
of discourses of early Buddhism preserved in Chinese. Sanskrit, Gāndhāri, and
Tibetan translation. Sometimes
āgama is used to refer to a class
of scripture. Its meaning can encompass the
Sutta-pitaka,
which the Theravada
tradition holds to be the oldest and most historically accurate representation
of the teachings of Buddha, together with the Vinaya-pitaka.
There are four extant
collections of āgamas, and one for which we have only references and fragments
(the Kṣudrakāgama). The four extant collections are preserved in their entirety
only in Chinese translation (āgama: 阿含經), although small portions of all four
have recently been discovered in Sanskrit, and portions of four of the five
āgamas are preserved in Tibetan.
These
āgama sutras correspond to
the first four
Nikayas (and parts of the fifth) of the Pitaka of the Pali Canon. In this sense,
āgama
is a synonym for one of the meanings of nikaya. The āgamas have been compared
to the Pali Canon's Nikayas by contemporary scholars in an attempt to identify
possible changes and root phrasings. The āgamas' existence and similarity to
the Sutta Pitaka are sometimes used by scholars to assess to what degree these
teachings are a historically authentic representation of the Canon of early Buddhism.
Sometimes also the differences between them are used to suggest an alternative
meaning to the accepted meaning of a suttra in either of the two recensions.
Sometimes the word
āgama is
used to refer not to a specific scripture, but to a class of scripture. In this
case, its meaning can also encompass the
Sutta-pitaka, which the Theravada
tradition holds to be the oldest and most historically accurate representation
of the teachings of the Buddha
, together with the Vinaya.
In the 4th century Mahāyāna abhidharma
work Abhidharmasamuccaya, Asanga refers to the collection which contains the āgamas as
the Śrāvakapiṭaka, and associates it with the sravakas and pratyekabuddhas.
Asaṅga classifies the Mahayana sutras as belonging to the Bodhisattvapiṭaka,
which is designated as the collection of teachings for bodhisattvas.
There are four extant collections
of āgamas, and one for which we have only references and fragments (the
Kṣudrakāgama). The four extant collections are preserved in their entirety only
in Chinese translation (āgama: 阿含經), although small portions of all four have
recently been discovered in Sanskrit, and portions of four of the five āgamas
are preserved in Tibetan.
The five Agamas include:
The
Dīrgha Āgama ("Long
Discourses")/ the
Dīgha Nikāya
The
Madhyama Āgama
("Middle-length Discourses")/ the
Majjhima
Nikāya
The
Saṃyukta Āgama
("Connected Discourses")/ the
Saṃyutta
Nikāya
The Ekottara Āgama ("Numbered Discourses”)/ the
Anguttara
Nikāya
The
Kṣudraka Āgama ("Minor
Collection")/ the
Khuddaka Nikāya
[TRƯỜNG A-HÀM tương đương với
TRƯỜNG BỘ – chép những bài pháp dài.
TRUNG A-HÀM và TRUNG BỘ chép những
bài pháp bậc trung.
TƯƠNG ƯNG BỘ tương đương với TẠP A-HÀM – chép những lời
kinh có nội dung tượng tự nhau.
TĂNG NHẤT và TĂNG CHI –
chép những bài sắp xếp theo con số. Riêng TIỂU BỘ KINH thì Pàli tạng mới có –
ghi chép những câu kệ vắn tắt.]
As Walpola Rahula noted in his
Gems of Buddhist
Wisdom:
We must not confuse Hīnayāna with
Theravāda because the terms are not synonymous. Theravāda Buddhism went to Sri
Lanka during the 3rd Century BC when there was no Mahāyāna at all. Hīnayāna
sects developed in India and had an existence independent from the form of
Buddhism existing in Sri Lanka. Today there is no Hīnayāna sect in existence
anywhere in the world. Therefore, in 1950 the World Fellowship of Buddhists
inaugurated in Colombo unanimously decided that the term Hīnayana should be
dropped when referring to Buddhism existing today in Sri Lanka, Thailand,
Burma, Cambodia, Laos, etc. This is the brief history of Theravāda, Mahayāna
and Hīnayāna.
The Theravada school remained a
presence on the Indian mainland long after its establishment in Sri Lanka,
however. In addition, since the time of Rahula's writing considerable evidence
has emerged indicating that Theravadins and Mahayanists interacted extensively
in Sri Lanka throughout the first millennium CE, so any suggestion that there
was no contact between the two would be incorrect.
Sources:
http://www.daophatngaynay.com/vn/kinh-dien/pali/12329-Khai-quat-lich-su-truyen-ba-kinh-dien-va-nhung-dac-diem-cua-kinh-tang-Nikaya.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinayana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikaya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Buddhist_schools
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandh%C4%81ran_Buddhist_Texts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sthaviravada
