The Internet Archive discovers and captures web pages through many different web crawls.
At any given time several distinct crawls are running, some for months, and some every day or longer.
View the web archive through the Wayback Machine.
The scriptures tell how the First Council held shortly after the Buddha's death collected together the discipline (vinaya), and the dhamma in five collections. Tradition holds that little was added to the Canon after this. Scholars are more skeptical, but differ in their degrees of scepticism. Richard Gombrich thinks most of the first four nikayas (see below) go back to the Buddha, in content but not in form.[1] The late Professor Hirakawa Akira says[2] that the First Council collected only short prose passages or verses expressing important doctrines, and that these were expanded into full length suttas over the next century.
This includes The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, The Fruits of the Contemplative Life, and The Buddha's Last Days. There are 34 long suttas in this nikaya.
These teachings are arranged numerically. It includes, according to the commentary's reckoning, 9,565 short suttas grouped by number from ones to elevens
This is a heterogeneous mix of sermons, doctrines, and poetry attributed to the Buddha and his disciples. The contents vary somewhat between editions. The Thai edition includes 1-15 below, the Sinhalese edition 1-17 and the Burmese edition 1-18.
The first four nikayas and more than half of the fifth have been translated by the Pali Text Society[1]. The first three have also been translated in the Teachings of the Buddha series by Wisdom Publications, with a translation of the fourth in preparation.
Selections (including material from at least two nikayas):
Buddhist Suttas, ed & tr T. W. Rhys Davids, Sacred Books of the East, volume XI, Clarendon/Oxford, 1881; reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi (& ?Dover, New York)
The Word of the Buddha, ed & tr Nyanatiloka, 1935
Early Buddhist Poetry, ed I. B. Horner, Ananda Semage, Colombo, 1963
The Book of Protection, tr Piyadassi, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 1981; translation of the paritta
In the Buddha's Words, ed & tr Bodhi, Wisdom Pubns, 2005
Early Buddhist Discourses, ed & tr John J. Holder, 2006
Sayings of the Buddha, ed & tr Rupert Gethin, Oxford University Press, 2008
Basic Teachings of the Buddha, ed & tr Glenn Wallis, New York: Random House, 2007
