Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Majjhima Nikaya emerged from a historical window spanning the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE. This timeframe marks the period during which the collection was composed and transmitted within early Theravada Buddhism.
The text contains exactly 152 discourses attributed to the Buddha and his chief disciples. The Sarvastivadin recension appears complete in Chinese as the Zhong Ahanjing with 222 sutras compared to the 152 suttas found in the Pali Majjhima Nikaya.
Lord Chalmers published Further Dialogues of the Buddha between 1898 and 1926 through the Pali Text Society in London. Bhikkhu Sujato completed The Middle Discourses in 2018 and made it available online at SuttaCentral under public domain terms.
Specific suttas like the Sammadiitti Sutta and Anapanasati Sutta appear within these pages as examples of doctrinal depth. The Parable of the Poisoned Arrow also appears here as a famous teaching moment covering everything from meditation techniques to complex philosophical arguments about reality and perception.
These suttas are arranged into three parts, each containing five specific divisions. All divisions except the penultimate one hold ten discourses each creating a systematic framework for studying the middle-length sayings of the tradition.