known as the Tipitaka (Three Baskets), of which the first section, the Vinayapitaka (Basket of Discipline), deals with the organization and discipline of monks; the second, the Suttapitaka (Basket of Discourses), gives the Buddha’s teachings and sermons; and the third, the Abhidhammapitaka (Basket of Ultimate Doctrine), offers a complex systematization of the whole. It was the monks who preserved the Buddha’s teachings, at first by committing them to memory and then by recording and copying the Buddhist canon and producing commentaries and other Buddhist texts. Many monasteries became great centers of learning, attracting students from distant countries and organizing Buddhist missions. As a result, over several centuries Buddhism spread south from India to Sri Lanka and Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam and north to Central Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. The school of Buddhism that spread northward became known as Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhism and developed many different forms, including Tantric and Zen Buddhism, and the school that spread southward became known as Theravada (Way of the Elders) Buddhism or Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) Buddhism—the latter term not favored by Theravada Buddhists. Theravada Buddhism is also sometimes referred to as Pali Buddhism, Pali being the name of the ancient language
in which its canonical texts are preserved. In India, the land of the Buddha’s birth, Buddhism was in time eclipsed by Hinduism and Islam. Although Buddhism was encountered and studied by many Western missionaries, travelers, and colonial administrators, it was only in the twentieth century that different forms of Buddhism were introduced into Western countries and Buddhist monasteries and communities were established there. The Tipitaka (in Sanskrit Tripitaka) texts are extensive and complex and contain much information about the Buddha’s life and ministry. But, since the scriptures are arranged by subject and form or length, this information is scattered and not in chronological sequence. Many of the discourses of the Buddha contain accounts of various episodes in his life. The Mahaparinibbana Sutta in particular is a major source for his last year; the Buddhavamsa (also part of the Suttapitaka) gives a very brief account of Gotama’s life and the distribution of his relics, together with details of previous Buddhas. Later Buddhist sources attempted to construct a fuller record or “biography” of the Buddha. Details and a narrative of part of the Buddha’s life are contained in the Pali commentaries, especially the Nidanakatha, compiled by Buddhaghosa in the early fifth century AD. This forms the introduction to the
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