The Patisambhidamagga is a Buddhist scripture, part of the Pali Canon

Pāli Canon

The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the only completely surviving early Buddhist canon, and one of the first to be written down...

 of Theravada

Theravada

Theravada ; literally, "the Teaching of the Elders" or "the Ancient Teaching", is the oldest surviving Buddhist school. It was founded in India...

 Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. It is included there as the twelfth book of the Sutta Pitaka

Sutta Pitaka

The Sutta Pitaka is the second of the three divisions of the Tipitaka or Pali Canon, the Pali collection of Buddhist writings, the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism...

's Khuddaka Nikaya

Khuddaka Nikaya

The Khuddaka Nikaya is the last of the five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the "three baskets" that compose the Pali Tipitaka, the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism...

. Tradition ascribes it to the Buddha's disciple

Sravaka

Shravaka or Śrāvaka or Sāvaka means "hearer" or, more generally, "disciple".This term is used by both Buddhists and Jains. In Jainism, a shravaka is any lay Jain...

 Sariputta. It comprises 30 chapters on different topics, of which the first, on knowledge, makes up about a third of the book.

History

Tradition ascribes the Patisambhidamagga to the Buddha

Gautama Buddha

Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...

's great disciple, Sariputta. Recent scholarship assesses that this text was likely composed around the 2nd c. CE.

The Patisambhidamagga has been described as an "attempt to systematize the Abhidhamma" and thus as a possible precursor to the Visuddhimagga

Visuddhimagga

The Visuddhimagga , is the 'great treatise' on Theravada Buddhist doctrine written by Buddhaghosa approximately in 430 CE in Sri Lanka. A comprehensive manual condensing the theoretical and practical teaching of the Buddha, it is considered the most important Theravada text outside of the Tipitaka...

.

Overview

The Patisambhidamagga has three divisions (vagga) composed of ten "chapters" (kathā) each for a total of thirty chapters. The three divisions are:

• Mahāvagga ("Great Division") - starts with an enumeration (mātikā) of 73 types of knowledge (ñāa) which are then elaborated upon in detail.
• Yuganandhavagga ("Coupling Division") - poses a series of questions.
• Paññāvagga ("Wisdom Division") - answers the prior division's questions.

Translations

Translation: The Path of Discrimination, tr Nanamoli, 1982, Pali Text Society

Pali Text Society

The Pali Text Society was founded in 1881 by T.W. Rhys Davids "to foster and promote the study of Pali texts".Pali is the language in which the texts of the Theravada school of Buddhism is preserved...

http://www.palitext.com, Bristol

In addition, Mindfulness of Breathing, tr Nanamoli, 1998 (6th ed.), Buddhist Publication Society

Buddhist Publication Society

The Buddhist Publication Society is a charity whose goal is to explain and spread the doctrine of the Buddha. It was founded in Sri Lanka in 1958 by two Sri Lankan Buddhist laymen, A.S. Karunaratna and Richard Abeyasekera, and a European-born Buddhist monk, Nyanaponika Thera...

, Kandy, Sri Lanka, includes a translation of the Anapanakatha in the Patisambhidamagga, along with the Anapanasati Sutta

Anapanasati Sutta

The Ānāpānasati Sutta or Ānāpānasmṛti Sūtra , "Breath-Mindfulness Discourse," is a discourse that details the Buddha's instruction on using the breath as a focus for meditation.-In Theravada Buddhism:...

and other material from Pali literature on the subject.

Sources

• Hinüber, Oskar von (2000). A Handbook of Pāli Literature. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016738-7.