Dīgha Nikāya

Overview

The Dīgha Nikāya consists of 34 discourses, broken into three groups:

• Silakkhandha-vagga—The Division Concerning Morality (suttas 1-13); named after a tract on monks' morality that occurs in each of its suttas (in theory; in practice it is not written out in full in all of them); in most of them it leads on to the jhānas (the main attainments of samatha meditation), the cultivation of psychic powers and attaining the fruit of an Arhat.
• Maha-vagga—The Great Division (suttas 14-23)
• Patika-vagga—The Patika Division (suttas 24-34)

Parallel

The Dīgha Nikāya corresponds to the Dīrgha Āgama found in the Sūtra Piṭakas of various early Buddhist schools, fragments of which survive in Sanskrit. A complete version of the Dīrgha Āgama of the Dharmagupta school survives in Chinese translation under the name Cháng Āhánjīng (長阿含經). It contains 30 sūtras in contrast to the 34 suttas of the Theravadin Dīgha Nikāya. In addition, portions of the Mūlasarvāstivādin school's Dīrgha Āgama survive in Sanskrit and in Tibetan translation.