Sutras

Sutras are important texts in the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions. In the northwestern region of India, during what is commonly regarded as the late-or post-Vedic period (roughly the seventh century BCE through the fifth) and prior to the advent of literacy, there developed a method of instruction for facilitating the memorization and oral transmission of teachings of various branches of knowledge that took the concise form of aphorisms, or a collection of them, known in Sanskrit as sutras (lit. “thread”). By organizing teachings into a more succinct and assimilable structure, the sutra emerged as a new genre valued precisely for its ability to codify and distill the essence of a given subject of study into a systematic sequence of mnemonic pronouncements that made possible the progressive acquisition of vast amounts of knowledge. In and of themselves, however, these compendia of terse, formulaic statements were often far too condensed, or else too technical, to be meaningfully understood by the novice who relied, instead, on the commentarial traditions (bhāṣya) and exegetical insights amplified by a teacher (guru). For this reason, a measure of the degree by which a particular sutra gained authority within a given tradition or social context is the weight of commentarial and subcommentarial material attached to it. One of the foundation texts of Indian philosophy, for example, the Yoga Sutra attributed to Patañjali, has exercised the interpretative skills of scores of scholars and practitioners for nearly two millennia and continues to inspire new translations and commentaries, both in India and in the West, where physical, psychological, and spiritual discipline remain a perennial concern.

Ritual and juridical matters are addressed in the earliest collections of aphorisms, the Kalpa Sutras. They form a part of the auxiliary sciences known as vedānga or “limbs of the Veda” and are divided into three groups: The Śrauta Sutras outline the ceremonial guidelines attending the public performance of solemn rites; the Gṛhya Sutras focus on the private sacramental rites of the householder; and the Dharma Sutras deal more broadly with moral and social concerns attending each stage of life (aśramas) from conception to cremation, including duties ascribed to the various classes of [Page 1240]society, proper occupations, rules of conduct, hospitality protocols, daily oblations, dietary regulations, purification rites, punishments and penances, and funerary rites. These were later elaborated on in the Dharma Shastra and served as the basis of Hindu law. But it was the comprehensive linguistic work of Pāṇini, the famed Sanskrit grammarian, that elevated the sutra to its highest level of sophistication.

With the emergence of Jainism and Buddhism during this same period, the apothegmatic precision of the sutra assumed a more extended expository and homiletic style. The Ācārāṇga Sutra, regarded as the oldest work in the extant Jain canon, combines rhetorical lyricism with a host of trenchant observations into human nature. Similarly, the exploration of a viable lifestyle and practice for lay and monastic disciples is a prominent theme in the sutra (sutta in Pali, or “discourse”) section of the Theravada Buddhist canon found in South and Southeast Asia. The technology of writing on birch bark and palm leaves coincided with the rise and development of Mahayana Buddhism and facilitated its spread to Central and East Asia, where the translation and copying of sutra literature became a major preoccupation. In this context, the manuscript itself became an object of worship. The veneration of sutras also inspired a rich and varied tradition throughout the Buddhist world of adorning and illuminating manuscripts. In modern times, expressing reverence for a sutra is central to the global appeal of various Nichiren Buddhist sects, which have popularized a vestige of the aural experience of the sutra by emphasizing devotion to the Lotus Sutra and the efficacy of repeatedly chanting its name—nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

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