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The Chinese Buddhist canon

Collection guide

Original study guide

Original explanatory guide.

This large collection serves traditions across East Asia. It includes translated Indian works and writings composed in East Asia.

Its Āgamas preserve many early discourses parallel to Pāli Nikāya texts. It also includes monastic codes, Mahāyāna scriptures, philosophical treatises, esoteric material and commentaries.

Different schools emphasize different parts of this inheritance: the Lotus Sūtra in Tiantai and Nichiren traditions, Pure Land texts in devotional traditions, and much more.

A Chinese canon is not simply a Chinese translation of the Pāli canon. The collections preserve intersecting but different transmission histories.

This page is an orientation to the work or collection, not its full text.

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