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Contents

• Translator's Introduction
• The Group of Ones (suttas 1-27)
• The Group of Twos (28-49)
• The Group of Threes (50-99)
• The Group of Fours (100-112)

Translator's Introduction

The name of the Itivuttaka is included in the standard early list of the nine divisions of the Buddha's teachings -- a list that predates the organization of the Pali Canon as we now know it. It's impossible to determine, though, the extent to which the Pali Itivuttaka as we now have it corresponds to the Itivuttaka mentioned in that list. The Chinese canon contains a translation of an Itivuttaka, attributed to Hsüan-tsang, that strongly resembles the text of the Pali Itivuttaka, the major difference being that parts of the Group of Threes and all of the Group of Fours in the Pali are missing in Hsüan-tsang's translation. Either these parts were later additions to the text that found their way into the Pali but not into the Sanskrit version translated by Hsüan-tsang, or the Sanskrit text was incomplete, or Hsüan-tsang's translation was left unfinished (it dates from the last months of his life).

The early history of the Itivuttaka is made even more complex by the fact that it was originally an oral tradition first written down several centuries after the Buddha's passing away. For a discussion of this issue, see the Historical Notes appended to Dhammapada: A Translation.

Whatever the history of the text, though, it has long been one of the favorite collections in the Pali Canon, in that it covers a wide range of the Buddha's teachings -- from the simplest to the most profound -- in a form that is accessible, appealing, and to the point.