[Buddha-l] Vaitulyakas

[L.S. Cousins]

Joanna,

>If a pittaka is not always a collection of texts, then what is it a 
>collection of? sutras? Why would any text refer to a Vetalhapitaka 
>if it's not a collecyion?
>This is a bit confusing.........perhaps you could elucidate further?

The word pi.taka is literally a basket and so later tradition tends 
to think of a receptacle for written  texts, but this is doubtful. 
Apart from anything else, you cannot literally put an orally 
memorized text in a basket. The notion of the Canon as consisting of 
three 'baskets' seems not to be older than the writing down of the 
texts themselves around the first century B.C.

The term seems extracted from the expression pi.takasampadaana found 
in various sutta contexts. There it seems to mean 'tradition' (and is 
usually criticized as a source of knowledge).

Later it comes to mean 'tradition' in a favourable sense i.e. the 
Buddhist tradition(s). So we get an inscriptional reference to a 
pe.takin i.e. a holder of the tradition and a text such as the 
Pe.taka or Pe.takopadesa. At around this time (i.e. a little before 
or a little after the writing down  of the texts) we get texts which 
include pe.taka as part of their title. So Cariyaapi.taka means "The 
tradition concerning the practice <of bodhisattas>". This usage 
continues for a while. So we get other texts whose name includes 
pe.taka in the sense of tradition as a second component.

After the writing down of the texts and their organization into three 
parts, we have the Threefold Tradition (tipi.taka). Inevitably, this 
becomes quickly reinterpreted to mean Three Baskets (tipi.taka) 
-indeed, retrospectively, this is the obvious meaning.

So you now get a term like Bodhisattvapi.taka. This is certainly a 
specific text giving the Bodhisattva Tradition, but in some contexts 
it clearly designates instead (correctly or by misunderstanding) a 
Bodhisattva Basket or Baskets, understood as a collection of 
Mahaayaana texts. See Ulrich Pagel, _The Bodhisattvapi.taka_, Tring, 
1995 for this (esp. pp. 7-35).

Lance Cousins