Udāna

The Udāna is a Buddhist scripture, part of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism. It is included there in the Sutta Pitaka's Khuddaka Nikaya. The title might be translated "inspired utterances". The book comprises 80 such utterances, most in verse, each preceded by a narrative giving the context in which the Buddha utters it. The famous story of the Blind men and an elephant appears in Udana, under Tittha Sutta (Ud. 6.4). The Udana is composed of eight chapters (vagga) of ten discourses each. The chapter titles are: Bodhivagga (Awakening chapter) Mucalindavagga (King Mucalinda chapter) Nandavagga (Ven. Nanda chapter) Meghiyavagga (Ven. Meghiya chapter) (Lay Follower Sona chapter) Jaccandhavagga (Blind From Birth chapter) Cullavagga (Minor chapter) (Pataligamiya chapter) Each discourse includes a prose portion followed by a verse. At the end of each prose section, as prelude to the verse, the following formulaic text is included: Then, on realizing the significance of that, the Blessed One on that occasion exclaimed: An alternate translation could be: Then, upon realizing the significance of that, the Blessed One on that occasion exclaimed this inspired utterance (udāna): It is from such "exclamations" () that the collection derives its name. This is one of the earlier Buddhist scriptures, A recent analysis concludes that the text of the Pali discourses, including the Udāna, was largely fixed in its current form, with only small differences from the modern text, by the first century B.C.E. Hinüber identifies this type of discourse (although not necessarily the existing collection itself) as being part of the pre-canonical (Pali for "nine-fold") which classified discourses according to their form and style, such as geyya (mixed prose and verse), gāthā (four-lined couplets), udāna (utterances) and jātaka (birth story). Within Buddhist literature, about a fourth of the Udana's prose sections correspond to text elsewhere in the Pali Canon, particularly in the Vinaya.