Aṅguttara Nikāya (The Numerical Discourses)

The suttas chosen

The Aṅguttara Nikāya’s nominal counterpart is the Ekottarika Āgama preserved in Chinese, the 增壹阿含經 (CBETA T02, no. 125): 472 discourses in fifty-one fascicles and fifty-two chapters. CBETA’s catalogue credits the translation to Gautama Saṅghadeva, but recent research takes the text we have to be for the most part Zhu Fonian’s translation of 384, made from the recitation of Dharmanandin, who had forgotten part of the Indic original, so that the team supplied other material for the gaps (Anālayo, 2016, pp. 1, 87–112; Palumbo, 2013); its school is debated, the Mahāsāṃghika the most often proposed (Hiraoka, 2013; Kuan, 2013). More to the point for a translator, the collection “incorporates textual material and ideas that are distinctly later than those found in other early discourse collections”, merges discourses that elsewhere stand apart into composite discourses “artificially forged”, at times in the written medium in China, and carries material related to emerging Mahāyāna thought; it is “perhaps the most challenging to translate” of the four Āgamas (Anālayo, 2016, pp. 1, 4, 84–86, 443–472). The mapping is thin as well: few Aṅguttara suttas have a full Ekottarika counterpart, and many have their only parallel in the Madhyama or the Saṃyukta. For this collection, then, agreement with the Ekottarika is not the measure it was for the Dīgha; the firmer ground is a Sarvāstivāda parallel in the Madhyama or the Saṃyukta Āgama, with the Ekottarika as a third witness where it has one. The six below are the initial set, chosen on that ground and for what they teach; others may be added later on the same terms.

Aṅguttara Nikāya	Āgama parallel	What the comparison shows
15A3/2.2.5 Kesamuttisutta	MA 16 伽藍經, 中阿含經 fascicle 3 (CBETA T01, no. 26, p. 438b); no Ekottarika parallel	The discourse to the Kālāmas, the same three roots and their opposites, the four pervasions and the four reliefs; the Chinese has no list of the ten grounds not to go by and no “know for yourselves” criterion, leads the three roots to the five precepts, adds the abandoning of the ten courses of action, and agrees in the first and third reliefs but not the second and fourth (its Parallels).
15A3/2.2.1 Titthāyatanasutta	MA 13 度經, fascicle 3 (p. 435a); no Ekottarika parallel	The same three domains of belief pressed to inaction and the same Dhamma set against them; the Chinese makes the views concern what a person does rather than experiences, gives the Bhagavā’s Dhamma as two topics, the six sense bases and the six components, has no eighteen mental explorations, and defines the four realisations by craving in the first discourse’s form (its Parallels).
16A6/2.1.9 Nibbedhikasutta	MA 111 達梵行經, fascicle 27 (p. 599b)	The same six things in the same six aspects, with contact, ignorance and craving as their origins and the eightfold path as the way; the Chinese opens among the Kurus, takes the defilements first and the result before the diversity, has no verse on sensual pleasure, adds an imperturbable destination, and explains the Pāḷi’s “one word, two words” as spells of one to a hundred lines (its Parallels).
15A4/1.5.5 Rohitassasutta	SA 1307, 雜阿含經 fascicle 49 (CBETA T02, no. 99, p. 359a); a partial Ekottarika parallel	The same frame, the seer who walked a hundred years and the world declared in this fathom-long body; the Chinese defines the four, the world as the five collections of fuel, its arising as craving for future existence, and has three stanzas to the Pāḷi’s two (its Parallels).
17A10/4.2.10 Cundasutta	SA 1039, fascicle 37 (p. 271b)	Purity by the brahmins’ rites against purity by the ten courses of action in both; the Chinese sets it at Rājagaha with Cunda a householder, has a fortnightly observance with cowdung and grass for the Pāḷi’s six rites, frames the courses as black and white qualities, abridges the wholesome list, names no destinations, and ends with Cunda leaving rather than taking refuge (its Parallels).
15A4/1.4.6 Doṇasutta	SA 101, fascicle 4 (p. 28a); a partial Ekottarika parallel	“Could you be a god?” “I am a Buddha”: the footprints, the questions and the lotus unsoiled by the water in both; the Chinese has the Buddha already seated when the brahmin passes, ten kinds of being asked in two rounds for the Pāḷi’s four, no prose answers, and a longer verse (its Parallels).

Each sutta is translated on a page of its own, in the order of the table, with its parallel compared at the foot of the page.

Aṅguttara Nikāya (The Numerical Discourses)

15A3/2.2.5 Kesamuttisutta (The Discourse at Kesamutta)

At Kesamutta, a market town of the Kālāmas, the Kālāmas tell the Bhagavā that visiting religious practitioners each praise their own doctrine and denigrate the others’, and ask whom to believe. The Bhagavā tells them not to go by tradition, scripture, reasoning or a teacher’s standing but by what they themselves know to lead to harm or to welfare, and leads them through greed, hatred and delusion and their opposites. A disciple who fills every direction with goodwill, compassion, happiness for others and equanimity attains four reliefs in this very life, whatever the truth about another world.

15A3/2.2.1 Titthāyatanasutta (The Discourse on the Domains of Belief)

The Bhagavā names three domains of belief that collapse into inaction when the wise press them: that all a person experiences is by reason of what was done in the past, by reason of a supreme god’s creation, or without reason or cause. Each makes its holders killers and liars by the same reason and leaves no desire or effort to do what should be done. Against them he sets his own Dhamma, which no wise wanderer or brahmin can refute: the six components, the six sense bases of contact, the eighteen mental explorations and the four realisations.

16A6/2.1.9 Nibbedhikasutta (The Penetrating Discourse)

The Bhagavā teaches the bhikkhū a nibbedhikapariyāya (penetrating discourse) on six things: sensual pleasures, feelings, apperceptions, the defilements, kamma (action) and suffering. Each is to be understood in six ways, in itself, its origin, its diversity, its result, its cessation and the path leading to its cessation, and a disciple of the liberated who understands them so understands the penetrating optimal life as their cessation. On the way the discourse defines kāma as the passion of intention rather than the beautiful things of the world, and kamma as intention.

15A4/1.5.5 Rohitassasutta (The Discourse to Rohitassa)

At Sāvatthī the deity Rohitassa asks the Bhagavā whether the end of the world, where there is no birth, ageing, death, passing away or reappearing, can be reached by going. The Bhagavā says it cannot, and Rohitassa tells how, as a seer of great speed in a former life, he walked a hundred years and died on the way. Without reaching the end of the world there is no end of suffering, he adds, yet it is in this fathom-long body with apperception and mind that he declares the world, its origin, its cessation and the path.

17A10/4.2.10 Cundasutta (The Discourse to Cunda)

At Pāvā, Cunda the smith’s son tells the Bhagavā that he approves of the purification rites of the western brahmins: touching the earth at dawn, or cowdung, or grass, tending the fire, worshipping the sun, bathing in the evening. The Bhagavā answers that purity in the discipline of the liberated is otherwise: the ten unwholesome courses of action of body, speech and mind leave a person impure whether he performs the rites or not, and the ten wholesome courses leave him pure; the one leads to bad destinations, the other to good. Cunda goes for refuge.

15A4/1.4.6 Doṇasutta (The Discourse to Doṇa)

On the road between Ukkaṭṭhā and Setabyā the brahmin Doṇa sees wheel marks in the Bhagavā’s footprints, follows them to where he sits at the foot of a tree, and asks whether he could be a god, a gandhabba, a yakkha or a human being. The Bhagavā denies each: the defilements through which he might have become any of these are destroyed, and like a lotus risen above the water he dwells unsullied by the world; he is to be remembered as a Buddha.

References

Anālayo, B. (2016). Ekottarika-āgama Studies. Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation.

Hiraoka, S. (2013). The School Affiliation of the Ekottarika-āgama. In Dhammadinnā (Ed.), Research on the Ekottarika-āgama (Taishō 125) (pp. 71–105). Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation.

Kuan, T. (2013). Legends and Transcendence: Sectarian Affiliations of the Ekottarika Āgama in Chinese Translation. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 133(4), 607–634.

Palumbo, A. (2013). An Early Chinese Commentary on the Ekottarika-āgama: The Fenbie gongde lun 分別功德論 and the History of the Translation of the Zengyi ahan jing 增一阿含經. Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation.