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''Nikāya'' () is a
Pāli Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhi ...
word meaning "volume". It is often used like the
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
word '' āgama'' () to mean "collection", "assemblage", "class" or "group" in both Pāḷi and Sanskrit. It is most commonly used in reference to the Pali
Buddhist texts Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition. The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts ...
of the Tripitaka namely those found in the
Sutta Piṭaka The Sutta Pitaka (; or Suttanta Pitaka; Basket of Discourse; cf Sanskrit ) is the second of the three divisions of the Tripitaka or Pali Canon, the Pali collection of Buddhist writings of Theravada Buddhism. The other two parts of the Tripiṭa ...
. It is also used to refer to monastic lineages, where it is sometimes translated as a 'monastic fraternity'. The term ''Nikāya'' Buddhism is sometimes used in contemporary scholarship to refer to the Buddhism of the
early Buddhist schools The early Buddhist schools are those schools into which the Buddhist monastic saṅgha split early in the history of Buddhism. The divisions were originally due to differences in Vinaya and later also due to doctrinal differences and geogra ...
.


Text collections

In the
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 most complete extant early Buddhist canon. It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school. During ...
, particularly, the "Discourse Basket" or ''Sutta Piṭaka'', the meaning of ''nikāya'' is roughly equivalent to the English ''collection'' and is used to describe groupings of discourses according to theme, length, or other categories. For example, the ''Sutta Piṭaka'' is broken up into five nikāyas: * the Dīgha Nikāya, the collection of long (Pāḷi: ''dīgha'') discourses * the
Majjhima Nikāya The Majjhima Nikāya (-nikāya; "Collection of Middle-length Discourses") is a Buddhist scripture, the second of the five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the "three baskets" that compose the Pali Tipitaka (lit ...
, the collection of middle-length (''majjhima'') discourses * the Samyutta Nikāya, the collection of thematically linked (''samyutta'') discourses * the Anguttara Nikāya, the "gradual collection" (discourses grouped by content enumerations) * the
Khuddaka Nikāya The Khuddaka Nikāya () 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. This nikaya consists of fifteen (Thailand), ...
, the "minor collection" In the other early Buddhist schools the alternate term ''āgama'' was used instead of nikāya to describe their ''Sutra Piṭaka''s. Thus the non-
Mahāyāna ''Mahāyāna'' (; "Great Vehicle") is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India (c. 1st century BCE onwards) and is considered one of the three main existing br ...
portion of the Sanskrit-language ''Sutra Piṭaka'' is referred to as "the Āgamas" by Mahāyāna Buddhists. The Āgamas survive for the most part only in
Classical Tibetan Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from o ...
and Chinese translation. They correspond closely with the Pāḷi nikāyas.


Monastic divisions

Among the Theravāda nations of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, ''nikāya'' is also used as the term for a monastic division or lineage; these groupings are also sometimes called "monastic fraternities" or "frateries". Nikāyas may emerge among monastic groupings as a result of royal or government patronage (such as the Dhammayuttika Nikāya of Thailand, due to the national origin of their ordination lineage (the Siam Nikāya of
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
), because of differences in the interpretation of the monastic code, or due to other factors (such as the Amarapura Nikāya in Sri Lanka, which emerged as a reaction to caste restrictions within the Siam Nikāya). These divisions do not rise to the level of forming separate sects within the Theravāda tradition, because they do not typically follow different doctrines or monastic codes, nor do these divisions extend to the laity. In
Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
, nikaya monastic orders have emerged in response to the relative conservativeness with which the
Vinaya The Vinaya (Pali & Sanskrit: विनय) is the division of the Buddhist canon ('' Tripitaka'') containing the rules and procedures that govern the Buddhist Sangha (community of like-minded ''sramanas''). Three parallel Vinaya traditions rema ...
s are interpreted, and the hierarchical structure within the nikaya. Since 1980, no new nikayas have been allowed, and there are a total of nine legally recognized monastic orders in Burma today under the 1990 Law Concerning Sangha Organizations. The largest of these is the Thudhamma Nikaya, which was founded in the 1800s during the
Konbaung Dynasty The Konbaung dynasty ( my, ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်, ), also known as Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) and formerly known as the Alompra dynasty (အလောင်းဘ ...
.


See also

* Āgama (Buddhism) *
Early Buddhist schools The early Buddhist schools are those schools into which the Buddhist monastic saṅgha split early in the history of Buddhism. The divisions were originally due to differences in Vinaya and later also due to doctrinal differences and geogra ...
* Nikaya Buddhism * Pāḷi Canon


Notes


Bibliography

* Rhys Davids, T.W. & William Stede (eds.) (1921-5). ''The Pali Text Society’s Pali–English Dictionary''. Chipstead:
Pali Text Society The Pali Text Society is a text publication society founded in 1881 by Thomas William Rhys Davids "to foster and promote the study of Pāli texts". Pāli is the language in which the texts of the Theravada school of Buddhism are preserved. The ...
. A general on-line search engine for the PED is available at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/. {{Theravada Buddhist orders Theravada Pāli Canon Tripiṭaka