lly forthcoming, but is sometimes a part of the accepted text and
sometimes regarded as merely a commentary. To this division of the
Pitaka belong the Dhammapada, a justly celebrated anthology of
devotional verses, and the Sutta-Nipata, a very ancient collection of
suttas chiefly in metre. Other important works included in it are the
Thera and Theri-gatha or poems written by monks and nuns respectively,
and the Jataka or stories about the Buddha's previous births[607]. Some
of the rather miscellaneous contents of this Nikaya are late and do not
belong to the same epoch of thought as the discourses attributed to
Gotama. Such are the Buddha-vamsa, or lives of Gotama and his
twenty-four predecessors, the Cariya-Pitaka, a selection of Jataka
stories about Gotama's previous births and the Vimana and Peta-vatthus,
accounts of celestial mansions and of the distressful existence led by
those who are condemned to be ghosts[608].

Though some works comprised in this Nikaya (e.g. the Suttanipata) are
very ancient, the collection, as it stands, is late and probably known
only to the southern Church. The contents of it are not quite the same
in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, and only a small portion of them has been
identified in the Chinese Tripitaka. Nevertheless the word
_pancanekayika_, one who knows the five Nikayas, is found in the
inscriptions of Sanchi and five Nikayas are mentioned in the last books
of the Cullavagga. Thus a fifth Nikaya of some kind must have been known
fairly early.

The third Pitaka is known by the name of Abhidhamma. Dhamma is the usual
designation for the doctrine of the Buddha and Buddhaghosa[609] explains
the prefix abhi as signifying excess and distinction, so that this
Pitaka is considered pre-eminent because it surpasses the others. This
pre-eminence consists solely in method and scope, not in novelty of
matter or charm of diction. The point of view of the Abhidhamma is
certainly later than that of the Sutta Pitaka and in some ways marks an
advance, for instead of professing to report the discourses of Gotama it
takes the various topics on which he touched, especially psychological
ethics, and treats them in a connected and systematic manner. The style
shows some resemblance to Sanskrit sutras for it is so technical both in
vocabulary and arrangement that it can hardly be understood without a
commentary[610]. According to tradition the Buddha recited the
Abhidhamma when he went to heaven to preach to th