Nikāya

Part of a series on
Buddhism
Glossary Index Outline
History Timeline The Buddha Pre-sectarian Buddhism Councils Silk Road transmission of Buddhism Decline in the Indian subcontinent Later Buddhists Buddhist modernism
Dharma Concepts Four Noble Truths Noble Eightfold Path Dharma wheel Five Aggregates Impermanence Suffering Not-self Dependent Origination Middle Way Emptiness Morality Karma Rebirth Saṃsāra Cosmology
Buddhist texts Buddhavacana Early Texts Tripiṭaka Mahayana Sutras Pāli Canon Sanskrit literature Tibetan canon Chinese canon Post-canon
Practices Three Jewels Buddhist Paths to liberation Five precepts Perfections Meditation Philosophical reasoning Devotional practices Merit making Recollections Mindfulness Wisdom Sublime abidings Aids to Enlightenment Monasticism Lay life Buddhist chant Pilgrimage Vegetarianism
Nirvāṇa Awakening Four Stages Arhat Pratyekabuddha Bodhisattva Buddha
Traditions Theravāda Pāli Mahāyāna Hinayana Chinese Vajrayāna Tibetan Navayana Newar
Buddhism by country Bhutan Brazil Cambodia China India Indonesia Japan Korea Laos Malaysia Mongolia Myanmar Russia Singapore US Sri Lanka Taiwan Thailand Tibet Vietnam
Religion portal
v t e

Nikāya (निकाय) is a

. It is also used to refer to monastic lineages, where it is sometimes translated as a 'monastic fraternity'.

The term Nikāya Buddhism is sometimes used in contemporary scholarship to refer to the Buddhism of the early Buddhist schools.

Text collections

In the

, particularly, the "Discourse Basket" or Sutta Piṭaka, the meaning of nikāya is roughly equivalent to the English collection and is used to describe groupings of discourses according to theme, length, or other categories. For example, the Sutta Piṭaka is broken up into five nikāyas:

• the
  Dīgha Nikāya
  , the collection of long (Pāḷi: dīgha) discourses
• the
  Majjhima Nikāya
  , the collection of middle-length (majjhima) discourses
• the
  Samyutta Nikāya
  , the collection of thematically linked (samyutta) discourses
• the
  Anguttara Nikāya
  , the "gradual collection" (discourses grouped by content enumerations)
• the
  Khuddaka Nikāya
  , the "minor collection"

In the other early Buddhist schools the alternate term āgama was used instead of nikāya to describe their Sutra Piṭakas. Thus the non-Mahāyāna portion of the Sanskrit-language Sutra Piṭaka is referred to as "the Āgamas" by Mahāyāna Buddhists. The Āgamas survive for the most part only in Classical Tibetan and Chinese translation. They correspond closely with the Pāḷi nikāyas.^[2]

Monastic divisions

Among the Theravāda nations of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, nikāya is also used as the term for a monastic division or lineage; these groupings are also sometimes called "monastic fraternities" or "frateries". Nikāyas may emerge among monastic groupings as a result of royal or government patronage (such as the

in Sri Lanka, which emerged as a reaction to caste restrictions within the Siam Nikāya). These divisions do not rise to the level of forming separate sects within the Theravāda tradition, because they do not typically follow different doctrines or monastic codes, nor do these divisions extend to the laity.

In

.

See also

• Āgama (Buddhism)
• Early Buddhist schools
• Nikaya Buddhism
• Pāḷi Canon

Notes

Bibliography

• Rhys Davids, T.W. & William Stede (eds.) (1921-5). The Pali Text Society’s Pali–English Dictionary. Chipstead: Pali Text Society. A general on-line search engine for the PED is available at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/
  .