Talk:Anupiṭaka

Meaning of "anupitaka"

This article contradicts itself about the meaning of the term it's supposed to be about. !st it says it's theb collected non-canonical literature, then it says it's (only) Netti, Petaka & Milinda. No evidence is cited for the existence of the term in either sense. Peter jackson (talk) 10:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I could not find this word (with various diacrits and declensions) in all of SLTP Pali texts using an on-line search engine (www.bodhgayanews.net/pali.htm). Nor does there appear to be reference to it on ATI (www.accesstoinsight.org). A Google search (sans wiki sites) found a few hits including:

a course listing from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, India[1]
an article on www.ambedkar.org by Dr. K. Jamanadas entitled, "Brahmanism Controlled Masses Through Language"[2]
the preface of a Pali-Hindi Dictionary by Ravindra Panth (ed).[3]
a Tribune of India (on-line newspaper) "Spiritual Nugget" quote, attributed to "Anupitaka Literature (Milinda Panho)"[4]

So I don't see any references within the literature itself or outside India. I do hope it's a real term because I like wikipiping "quasi-canonical" here :-) Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 15:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The word is not found in

Pali-English Dictionary
Critical Pali Dictionary
Dictionary of Pali
Dictionary of Pali Proper Names

This suggests it's pretty obscure. The question is, what does it mean? The article contradicts itself. The introductory definition uses it to cover all non-canonical literature in collected editions, but most of the article seems to assume it means just the paracanonical texts.

Assume the latter. Then naming policy is clear. Articles should be titled according to the most familiar form in English usage. So in this case the article should be renamed Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism). If Anupitaka is sufficiently notable, it should be a redirect. Peter jackson (talk) 09:44, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Peter -

In general, I agree with your assessment based on the article's current structure: one can readily infer that "anupitaka" refers to the "paracanonical" or "quasi-canonical" texts (Netti, Peta, Mln). I'd like to add to this, amplifying one of your observations, the PTS PED's pertinent definition of "anu-" (at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.0:1:803.pali): "following after = second to, secondary, supplementary, inferior, minor, after, smaller...."

I think though there are at least two speed bumps on the road to certainty regarding this assessment:

At http://www.jammuuniversity.in/notification/bud-3.pdf is an University of Jammu Exam Notice that refers to "Pre-Buddhist Pali Anupitaka Literature" (suggesting that "anupitaka" can refer to something that predates Buddhism, let alone the Pali Canon).
This article's very first edit seems to really be referencing more than just the paracanonical Pali literature (e.g., in its mentioning of commentaries, chronicles, grammars, etc., and its underscoring of the three periods of Pali literature's development — all of which appears to me to be readily lost in the current article's header structure).

Soooo, might it be worthwhile moving all the paracanonical stuff to a Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism) (assuming such does not already exist somewhere) and then leaving all of the remaining "supplementary to canonical" material here (e.g., with a subsection hatnote of some sort pointing to Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism))?

In other words, contrary to my prior understanding, I now think "anupitaka" is supposed to simply mean something like, to use a PED word, "supplementary" (e.g., commentaries, chronicles, etc.) and am inclined to leave text in this article to reflect this, until someone provides something more definitive. Working with your thoughtful suggestion, I also think it would be of value to move material from this article to Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism) unless someone provides a convincing counter-argument. Your thoughts?

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 19:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I just reorganized (changed heading levels & wordsmithed) the article's headers (which were added after this article's initial text was created and by an editor other than the original editor -- whose sole contribution to WP appears to be this article's initial text) to better reflect the opening paragraph's statements. I regret if this change is assessed to be detrimental. Hope it helps. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 19:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anu-FWIW, adding to your list, Peter, I wasn't able to find "anupitaka" (either in the indices or based on a gloss of a subsection of text) in:

Geiger's "Pali Literature and Language"
von Hinuber's "A Handbook of Pali Literature" (including when using an intra-text Google search[5])

On the other hand, Google books identifies five texts (at least one of which is a Ph.D. dissertation) that include the term "anupitaka":[6]

"Ancient Indian Literature: An Anthology," by T. R. S. Sharma, C. K. Seshdri, June Gaur, Sahitya Akademi
"Paññā in Early Buddhism: With Special Reference to Visuddhimagga," by Baidyanath Labh (Wisdom Pubs.)
"Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature," by Amaresh Datta, Mohan Lal
"A Selection of His Writings," by Narendra Deva, Ajaya Kumāra, Acharya Narendra Deva Samajwadi Sansthan
"Orientalistische Literaturzeitung," by Felix Ernst Peiser

Unfortunately, I've not been able to delve inside any of these texts to ascertain anything more than that "anupitaka" is translated as "extra-canonical," is juxtaposed with "tipitaka," and includes the Milindhapanha. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 05:51, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One last factoid (and then I'm putting this bone down for the evening). The following link claims to show the curriculum for Tribhuvan University's (Nepal) Buddhist Studies Graduate Program: http://pgdbuddhism.20m.com/curriculum.htm. On it, it lists a course, "A General introduction to the Anupitaka-s: [examples:?] Milinda, Visuddhimagga, Mahavamsa." This course is the second in a three-course series, preceded by an intro to the Tipitaka and followed by an intro to the Atthakatha.

Night! Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 06:20, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You've found some pretty odd stuff. In particular, there's no such thing as pre-Buddhist Pali literature. If, as appears to be the case, anupitaka simply means non- or post-canonical Pali literature, then the article should be so named, with anupitaka as a redirect if it's notable enough. We could also have an article on paracanonical works. Note that some authors apply that term to the Patimokkha. It does seem to be commoner than semi- or quasi-canonical, tho' it would be hard to prove that.

As an interesting, tho' probably irrelevant, aside, I'll just mention that the Milinda, Visuddhimagga & Mahavamsa are included in the Japanese translation of the Canon, along with the Dipavamsa & the jataka commentary. Peter jackson (talk) 09:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your aside is very interesting. I had no idea. Good point too about the "pre-Buddhist Pali literature" :-) FWIW, I also saw in von Hinuber that a fourth text, Suttasangaha, is included as a paracanonical work in some contexts....

Sounds like we agree that a Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism) article would be a useful addition. I'll try to make time to take a first swipe at it (referencing this discussion and article) later today -- unless you get to it first :-) As you recommend, I'll go with "para-" since, with some thought, "quasi-" sounds a tad dismissive and "semi-" (at least to my ear) sounds somehow misguidedly quantifying (as if "half" canonical).

If you're inclined, feel free to rename/move or even request-deletion for this article. I'm inclined to let it stand (after eviscerating it of the paracanonical material) but I can appreciate your acting otherwise. Cheers, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 13:55, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, just to add to the above lists, I also checked the following resource today for "anupitaka" and came up empty:

Kohn, Michael H. (trans.) (1991). The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen. Boston: Shambhala. ISBN 0-87773-520-4.

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 01:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moved text regarding paracanonical material

As discussed above in this thread, I've copied all the material from this article regarding the paracanonical texts to Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism). The reasons for this include:

Such information provides a cohesive topic worthy of its own article
Such information in this article appeared to completely skew/misrepresent this article's own topic (which has yet to be completely determined due to a lack of thusfar available WP:RS)

Per WP:Consensus, if someone disagrees with this move/copying of text from here to Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism), please:

revert the changes (optional)
discuss here

Given the duplication of text at this time, I will now delete the copied text from this article (Anupitaka). Thanks, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 01:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I think it is worth noting that the editor of the vast majority of this article's text, User:Praanshu, has only made one edit to WP (i.e., the creation of this article eight months ago) and that Peter left User:Praanshu a thusfar unresponded-to user-talk-page note about this on-going discussion a couple of days ago. Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 02:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.P.S. This perhaps falls into the "better late than never" category but, in terms of quantifying "stakeholders" involved with this article, based on this article's history page:

Since the one-edit editor first created this article in Nov. 2007 — and not including edits by myself and Peter — there have been a total of 119 bytes added to this article: all either formatting (e.g., adding hyphens, typos, wikilinks and other wiki-markup) or inserted templates (e.g., Buddhism_topics).
After moving a couple of links to this article to the newly created Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism) page, there are no (zero, zip, zilch) wiki-links from (non-user, non-talk) WP articles to this article.

Thought this might be useful in terms of assessing the speed (i.e. after only two to three days of general discussion) with which text was moved from this article (which, admittedly, I've had some second thoughts about ...) as well as in determining what, if any, future decisions should be made about this page. Regards, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 20:18, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Canon's completion date

The statement that the Pali Canon was complete in the 3rd cent BC can easily be disproved by looking at the beginning pages of the Parivara, which include a long list of vinaya teachers in Ceylon. Peter jackson (talk) 11:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]