Madhyama Agama

• 1. Introduction

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  The Madhyama Agama survives only in Chinese. This early Indian Buddhist text, whose title means "Middle Collection," was translated into Chinese between 397 and 398 C.E. No copy in the original Indian language has been found. Catalogued as number 26 in the Taisho Tripitaka, it carries the Chinese title Zhong Ahan Jing. The text belongs to a tradition that took a separate path from the Pali Buddhist canon. How far apart the two collections stand becomes clear when they are placed side by side. What language the originals were written in, and how the collection compares to its Pali counterpart, are the central questions. Who finally brought it into English is the thread that closes the story.

• 2. A Canon Within a Canon

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  The Madhyama Agama belongs to a group of four ancient collections called the Agamas, housed within the Chinese Buddhist Canon. These four form part of the Sanskritic Sutra Pitaka, transmissions of early Buddhist teaching carried into East Asia through Sanskrit-family languages. The Madhyama Agama contributes 222 discourses across 18 chapters. Its closest Pali counterpart, the Majjhima Nikaya, holds 152 discourses in 15 chapters. The size difference between the two collections raises one question; what language the original Madhyama Agama was written in raises another.

• 3. Language and Lineage

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  P.V. Bapat proposed that the source behind the Chinese translation was written in a form of Prakrit, an ancient Indian dialect family. Prakrit, in Bapat's view, stands closer to Pali than to Sanskrit. That difference matters because the Madhyama Agama's original may share linguistic roots with the Pali tradition. Yet the two reached their present forms by entirely different routes. The text is believed to have originated within the Sarvastivada, one of the early schools of Indian Buddhism. When scholars eventually set that collection against its Pali equivalents, they found a pattern more complex than simple overlap.

• 4. Mapping the Parallels

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  One hundred and three of the Madhyama Agama's 222 discourses have their counterpart in the Majjhima Nikaya, its closest Pali equivalent. The four major Pali collections that together form the Sutta Pitaka each receive a share of those parallels. Eighty-seven discourses find their match in the Anguttara Nikaya, seventeen in the Samyutta Nikaya, and fourteen in the Digha Nikaya. Fourteen discourses in the Madhyama Agama have no known parallel anywhere in the Pali corpus. Bringing those distributions into scholarly alignment would eventually call for an English edition that could reach readers outside the Chinese Buddhist tradition.

• 5. Into English

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  Marcus Bingenheimer led the project as chief editor, with Bhikkhu Analayo and Rodney S. Bucknell as co-editors. Work began in 2006 on what would become the first English-language edition of the Madhyama Agama. The translation was planned as three volumes. The first of those three appeared in 2013. Eighteen chapters and more than fifteen hundred years of transmission separated the text's origins from Bingenheimer's English edition.