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Concept
Nikāya
Summary
Nikāya (निकाय) is a Pāli word meaning "volume". It is often used like the Sanskrit word āgama (आगम) to mean "collection", "assemblage", "class" or "group" in both Pāḷi and Sanskrit. It is most commonly used in reference to the Pali Buddhist texts of the Tripitaka namely those found in the Sutta Piṭaka. It is also used to refer to monastic lineages, where it is sometimes translated as a 'monastic fraternity'.
The term Nikāya Buddhism is sometimes used in contemporary scholarship to refer to the Buddhism of the early Buddhist schools.
In the Pāli Canon, particularly, the "Discourse Basket" or Sutta Piṭaka, the meaning of nikāya is roughly equivalent to the English collection and is used to describe groupings of discourses according to theme, length, or other categories. For example, the Sutta Piṭaka is broken up into five nikāyas:
the Dīgha Nikāya, the collection of long (Pāḷi: dīgha) discourses
the Majjhima Nikāya, the collection of middle-length (majjhima) discourses
the Samyutta Nikāya, the collection of thematically linked (samyutta) discourses
the Anguttara Nikāya, the "gradual collection" (discourses grouped by content enumerations)
the Khuddaka Nikāya, the "minor collection"
In the other early Buddhist schools the alternate term āgama was used instead of nikāya to describe their Sutra Piṭakas. Thus the non-Mahāyāna portion of the Sanskrit-language Sutra Piṭaka is referred to as "the Āgamas" by Mahāyāna Buddhists. The Āgamas survive for the most part only in Classical Tibetan and Chinese translation. They correspond closely with the Pāḷi nikāyas.
Among the Theravāda nations of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, nikāya is also used as the term for a monastic division or lineage; these groupings are also sometimes called "monastic fraternities" or "frateries". Nikāyas may emerge among monastic groupings as a result of royal or government patronage (such as the Dhammayuttika Nikāya of Thailand), due to the national origin of their ordination lineage (the Siam Nikāya of Sri Lanka), because of differences in the interpretation of the monastic code, or due to other factors (such as the Amarapura Nikāya in Sri Lanka, which emerged as a reaction to caste restrictions within the Siam Nikāya).
Official source
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