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Abbreviations,
Symbols,
and
Sutta Reference Numbers


Abbreviations

Pali Texts:

ANAnguttara Nikaya
CvCullavagga
DhpDhammapada
DhpADhammapada-atthakatha (Commentary to the Dhammapada)
DNDigha Nikaya
ItiItivuttaka
KhpKhuddakapatha
KhpAKhuddakapatha-atthakatha (Commentary to the Khuddakapatha)
KNKhuddaka Nikaya
MilnMilindapañha
MNMajjhima Nikaya
MvMahavagga
NdNiddesa
Nd1Mahaniddesa
Nd2Culaniddesa
SnSutta Nipata
SNSamyutta Nikaya
ThagTheragatha
ThagATheragatha-atthakatha (Commentary to the Theragatha)
ThigTherigatha
ThigATherigatha-atthakatha (Commentary to the Therigatha)
UdUdana

Miscellaneous abbreviations:

BGS The Book of the Gradual Sayings, F.L. Woodward and E.M. Hare, trans. (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1994). An English translation of the Anguttara Nikaya.
BJT Sri Lanka Buddha Jayanti Tripitaka Series. A free public-domain electronic edition of the Tipitaka, published in 1997 by the International Buddhist Research and Information Center (380/9, Sarana Road, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka) and distributed by the Sri Lanka Tripitaka Project in association with the » Journal of Buddhist Ethics.
BKS The Book of the Kindred Sayings, Rhys Davids and F.L. Woodward, trans. (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1997). An English translation of the Samyutta Nikaya.
BPS Buddhist Publication Society
CDB The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans. (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000)
Comm, Comy Commentary
PTS Pali Text Society
Skt Sanskrit

Symbols

& Because Pali has many ways of expressing the conjunction "and," Thanissaro Bhikkhu has chosen to make frequent use in his sutta translations of the ampersand (&) to join lists of words and short phrases, while using the word "and" to join long phrases and clauses.
{} In the suttas and their brief summaries, the braces enclose an alternate sutta reference number (see below) — usually either the PTS Pali volume and page number or the verse number.
» Indicates a hypertext link to another website. Links to other websites will open in a new browser window. When it appears in the menu bar at the top of a page it simply serves as a divider between levels in the website file hierarchy.
Indicates a hypertext link to a file that will be downloaded onto your hard disk, either from Access to insight or from another site.
ZIP file icon Click this icon to download a zip-compressed archive of text files. For details about how to work with zip files, see "Downloading files from Access to Insight".
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Sutta Reference Numbers

Over the years, Pali and Buddhist scholars have used a variety of numbering schemes when referring to suttas and other texts in the Tipitaka.1 On this website I use the following convention to identify texts within the Sutta Pitaka:

Readers who are accustomed to other numbering systems or who wish to compare Access to Insight's translations against the original Pali texts may refer to the alternative reference numbers that appear in braces {} on the pages that contain the short summaries of the suttas. (These summaries are available by clicking on the "Context of this sutta" link at the top of a sutta page.) These alternate references consist either of the corresponding volume and starting page number in the PTS printed Pali edition (in the case of DN, MN, SN, and AN), the verse numbers (in Ud, Sn, Thag, and Thig), the nipata and sutta number (in Iti), or some combination thereof. The braces may also contain additional notes concerning a text's location within the Tipitaka, especially in cases where the numbering varies between editions of the Tipitaka.


Notes

1. For a review of the numbering systems used by many Pali scholars, see "The Contents and Structure of the Pali Canon and its Commentaries," by the »  UK Association for Buddhist Studies at the University of Sunderland.

2. These sutta tallies are for the complete Tipitaka; the number of sutta translations actually available on this website is a small fraction of that total.

3. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans. (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), p. 23.

4. 9,557 and 8,777: Handbook of Pali Literature, by Somapala Jayawardhana (Colombo: Karunaratne & Sons, 1994), p. 12. 2,344: Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, by Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1999), p. xv. 2,308: An Analysis of the Pali Canon, Russell Webb, ed. (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1975), p. 26.


Revised: Thursday 2005-07-07
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/abbrev.html