Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c5.s2.t2.10

c5.s2.t2.10

one Sutta or Suttanta there may be portions which can be called a sutta, a geyya¹, a gāthā, an udāna, a veyyākaraṇa, an abbhutadhamma, or a jātaka. It was long after the navāṅga division was known that the compilations Udāna, Itivuttaka, and Jātaka came into existence. The explanation of navāṅgas as attempted by Buddhaghosa² also shows that he did not know any particular sections of literature corresponding to the navāṅgas. It is very interesting to notice in his exposition that for two of the nine aṅgas, viz., Vedalla and Abbhutadhamma,³ he could not find any work or group of works which could be classified under these headings and so he named some suttas which came under them. Taking these two as our clue, we may suggest that the other seven of the navāṅgas should also be explained in the same way. Instead of putting the whole Abhidhamma collection under Veyyākaraṇa,⁴ the Suttas, in which Sāriputta, Mahākaccāna or Buddha⁵ gave detailed expositions of the four truths or the eightfold path, or of any tenet of Buddhism or of any of the pithy sayings of Buddha, should have been included. So also the Jātaka-Aṅga does not refer to the 550 Jātakas as Buddhaghosa says, but to the few stories found in the Nikāyas, in which Buddha refers to incidents in one of his