This article compares eight versions of a discourse on the analysis (vibhaṅga) of the 12 nidānas or causal factors of dependent arising, preserved in Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. The discourses fall into two groups, possibly representing two traditions of transmission. The analyses of the nidānas in each group show some differences in detail. The analyses do not explicitly involve the teaching of rebirth, implying that the early Buddhist teaching of dependent arising was concerned with a meditative reflection on the human condition in the present.
Understanding Buddhism: A Guide for Teachers, by James D. Holt. Bloomsbury, 2023. Teaching Religions and Worldviews series. 264pp. eBook £15.86, ISBN: 9781350330252; Pb. £19.79, ISBN: 9781350330276; Hb. £58.50, ISBN: 9781350330245.
Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law, edited by Andrew Bartles-Smith, Kate Crosby, Peter Harvey, Asanga Tilakaratne, Daniel Ratheiser, Noel Maurer Trew, Stefania Travagnin, Elizabeth J. Harris, Mahinda Deegalle, and Christina A. Kilby. Routledge, 2024. 470pp. eBook Open Access, ISBN: 9781003439820.
A Sense of Place and Belonging: The Chiang Tung Borderland of Northern Southeast Asia, by Klemens Karlsson. Cornell University Press, 2025. 246pp. Hb. $130, ISBN: 9781501779763.
The Apadāna of the Pali canon contains a terse and obscure verse account of the Buddha’s headache associated with the Sakyas’ massacre by Viḍūḍabha. While alluding to the fishermen episode in their past lives, it provides no lucid karmic backstory for the tragedy. This Theravāda account can be traced back to a Mahāsāṃghika text preserved in Chinese translation, T199 (Fo wubai dizi zishuo benqi jing), where we find a verse account almost identical to that in the Apadāna. The verse account is so condensed and vague that it seems to presuppose a more complete story. After examining relevant stories in Pali and Chinese, I identify two Mahāsāṃghika texts (in T125 and T197) as the source of the full karmic backstory, which is not intact in Pali literature. The T125 (Ekottarika Āgama) version is especially important in that sūtra 2 of Chapter 34 in T125 is a full-fledged avadāna, which provides karmic explanations for the Buddha’s headache and the Sakyas’ massacre in a three-part narrative structure. This avadāna tale was incorporated into the Kṣudraka-vastu of the Mūla-Sarvāstivāda Vinaya. Apart from this wholesale insertion, the relevant Mahāsāṃghika story as found in T125 and T197 (Xingqi xing jing) was borrowed in pieces by the Theravādins and the Mūla-Sarvāstivādins; these pieces were adapted and inserted into various texts of the two schools. Since these interpolations are taken out of context, they are incapable of fully conveying the original Mahāsāṃghika message.
