The Pali Canon and Early Monastic Community

The Pali Canon, known in the Theravada tradition as the Tipitaka ("Three Baskets"), is organized into the Vinaya Pitaka, containing the rules of monastic discipline; the Sutta Pitaka, containing the Buddha's discourses, subdivided into five collections or Nikayas — the Digha Nikaya (long discourses), Majjhima Nikaya (middle-length discourses), Samyutta Nikaya (connected discourses, grouped thematically), Anguttara Nikaya (numerically arranged discourses), and Khuddaka Nikaya (a miscellaneous collection including the Dhammapada and the Sutta Nipata); and the Abhidhamma Pitaka, a later systematic philosophical-psychological analysis of the categories underlying the discourses, generally regarded by scholars as a post-canonical scholastic development rather than a direct record of the Buddha's own words. According to Theravada tradition, the discourses and monastic rules were first formally recited and organized at the First Buddhist Council, held at Rajagaha shortly after the Buddha's death and traditionally dated to around 400 BCE (or 483 BCE under the long chronology), with the monk Ananda, the Buddha's longtime attendant celebrated for his prodigious memory, reciting the discourses, and the monk Upali reciting the monastic rules.