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Context of the Itivuttaka
- Itivuttaka
- This Was Said by the Buddha
- Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
- For free distribution only, as a gift of Dhamma
Note: An anthology of Thanissaro Bhikkhu's sutta translations is also
available in Microsoft Word 6 (Macintosh/Windows) format.
Contents
The Itivuttaka, a collection of 112 short discourses, takes its name from the statement
at the beginning of each of its discourses: this (iti) was said (vuttam) by
the Blessed One. The collection as a whole is attributed to a laywoman named Khujjuttara, who worked in the palace of King Udena
of Kosambi as a servant to one of his queens, Samavati. Because
the Queen could not leave the palace to hear the Buddha's discourses, Khujjuttara went in
her place, memorized what the Buddha said, and then returned to the palace to teach the
Queen and her 500 ladies-in-waiting. For her efforts, the Buddha cited Khujjuttara as the
foremost of his laywomen disciples in terms of her learning. She was also an effective
teacher: when the inner apartments of the palace later burned down, killing the Queen and
her entourage, the Buddha commented (in Ud VII.10) that all of the women had reached at
least the first stage of Awakening.
The name of the Itivuttaka is included in the standard early list of the nine divisions
of the Buddha's teachings -- a list that predates the organization of the Pali Canon as we
now know it. It's impossible to determine, though, the extent to which the Pali Itivuttaka
as we now have it corresponds to the Itivuttaka mentioned in that list. The Chinese canon
contains a translation of an Itivuttaka, attributed to Hsüan-tsang, that strongly
resembles the text of the Pali Itivuttaka, the major difference being that parts of the
Group of Threes and all of the Group of Fours in the Pali are missing in Hsüan-tsang's
translation. Either these parts were later additions to the text that found their way into
the Pali but not into the Sanskrit version translated by Hsüan-tsang, or the Sanskrit
text was incomplete, or Hsüan-tsang's translation was left unfinished (it dates from the
last months of his life).
The early history of the Itivuttaka is made even more complex by the fact that it was
originally an oral tradition first written down several centuries after the Buddha's
passing away. For a discussion of this issue, see the Historical
Notes appended to Dhammapada: A Translation.
Whatever the history of the text, though, it has long been one of the favorite
collections in the Pali Canon, in that it covers a wide range of the Buddha's teachings --
from the simplest to the most profound -- in a form that is accessible, appealing, and to
the point.