TEXTS AND TRADITIONS OF EARLY BUDDHISM

In a world dominated by materialism, it is refreshing to find cutting-edge research inspired by higher principles and the search for timeless truths.

Researcher: Dr Mun-keat Choong
School of Humanities

In the School of Humanities, world-leading scholar of Buddhism, Dr. Mun-keat Choong, has been pondering the earliest corpus of Buddhist discourses from ancient India and ancient China.

‘The Pāli Saṃyutta-nikāya (SN), and its Chinese counterpart, Saṃyukta-āgama (雜阿含經; Za-ahan jing; or SA) are two different versions of essentially the same collection of early Buddhist texts and traditions. The content and structure of the SN/SA derived from the first Buddhist council (saṃgīti), around the year 428 BCE. It therefore ‘represents’ the situation with regard to the compilation of early Buddhist teachings’.

What makes this such a critical area of study is that this first Buddhist council – and the discourses that emerged from it – occurred around the time of the death of the Buddha himself in his incarnation as Gautama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, or Shakyamuni Buddha – in the Mahājanapada period of ancient India.

It is well-known that both the SN and SA versions are made up of three categories of texts. These are the Sūtra/Sutta (‘Short, simple prose’), the Geya/Geyya (‘Verse mixed with prose’), and Vyākaraṇa/Veyyākaraṇa (‘Exposition’). But a comparative study is revealing of the similarities and differences between the two versions (Pāli and Chinese); not just in terms of the structure and the language, but also significant doctrinal differences.

Dr. Mun-keat Choong has been piecing-together a better understanding of these world-changing philosophies and beliefs across the course of many years (with four significant comparative studies appearing in the literature just over the last four years) and his work has been attracting recognition of the highest order.