<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  »No topics above this level« SN 1–11 The Group of Connected Discourses With Verses – Sagāthāvaggasaṁyutta

The “Book With Verses” is the first of the five books of the Connected Discourses. It is divided into eleven saṁyuttas or “sections”, with a total of 271 suttas. Most of these are further subdivided into vaggas of ten suttas. The word vagga is thus used of both the major overarching “book” and the subsidiary “chapter”. Each of the suttas in this collection contains verse with a prose narrative structure, although in many cases the prose has been omitted through abbreviation. Where most of the Saṁyutta is organized around subject matter, here the organizational principle is people. Each saṁyutta contains conversation involving the Buddha or his disciples with a different person or kind of person, such as gods, kings, nuns, or brahmins. A typical sutta has a bare narrative framework, where someone comes to the Buddha and utters a verse, and the Buddha replies with a better one. In some cases, notably the Sakkasaṁyutta, the narrative element is developed into a lively exchange. Some of the texts in this collection are well known and widely quoted, such as the invitation of Brahmā or the nun Vajirā’s simile of the person as a chariot. Most of the suttas here have parallels in the Chinese Saṁyuktāgama translations; the partial translations SA 2 and SA 3 include Sagāthāvagga material. In addition, many of the verses have parallels elsewhere throughout the Buddhist literature in all languages.