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BDK Tripitaka Translation Series
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| "It is my greatest wish...to make the translations available to the many
English-speaking people who have never had the opportunity to learn
about the Buddha's teachings." -- Rev. Dr. Yehan Numata |
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For forty-five years after his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, Sakyamuni
Buddha taught his followers the path leading from suffering to liberation. For
a few hundred years after the Buddha's passing in the mid-fifth century B.C.E.,
his teachings were memorized and transmitted orally. Beginning at the First
Buddhist Council in the second century B.C.E., these teachings began to be
recorded in written form. Eventually, the Buddhist teachings were codified into
a canon known as the Tripitaka, literally, "three baskets," because it was
divided into three main categories: the Sutra, the sermons of the Buddha; the
Vinaya, the precepts and rules of monastic discipline; and the Abhidharma,
commentaries and explications of the teachings.
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Over the centuries, as Buddhism spread from India throughout Asia, the
Tripitaka was transmitted to Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. As Buddhism
developed in each country where it took root, additional commentary texts and
scriptures were added to the canon. The most complete form of the mature
Mahayana Buddhist canon is the Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo, a compilation of
mostly Chinese texts along with some Korean and Japanese works, published in
1924. The Numata Center/ BDK Tripitaka Translation Series is based on this
version of the canon.
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The BDK Tripitaka Translation Series was begun in 1982 by Rev.
Dr. Yehan Numata to fulfill his dream to introduce the largely
unexplored Chinese Mahayana Tripitaka throughout the English-speaking world.
Chaired by the late Shoyu Hanayama of Musashino Women's College, the
Translation Committee, composed of thirteen eminent Buddhist scholars, met to
begin the task of selecting texts and assigning them for translation.
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The Committee selected 139 major texts from India, China, and Japan for the
First Series. An international community of nearly 100 top Buddhist
scholars, from the United States, Japan, India, China, France, Germany,
Belgium, and Canada, are participating in the translation work. As the First
Series of texts is translated and published, the Committee will select and
assign texts for the Second Series, continuing in this way until the entire
Taisho Tripitaka is completed. It has been estimated that it will take a
hundred years or more to translate and publish the entire canon, and that
eventually it will be compiled into a thousand volumes.
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