The Canon That Defines a Tradition

Reverence for the Pali Canon is central to Theravada identity and distinguishes it from the Mahayana traditions, which honour the early discourses but accord equal or higher authority to a large body of later Mahayana sutras that Theravada does not treat as the Buddha's word. The Canon's Vinaya still governs monastic life across Theravada lands, and its suttas anchor teaching and meditation. The affirmation thus names both a scripture and the conservative, text-centred self-understanding of the "Teaching of the Elders."

Modern comparative scholarship has strengthened confidence in an early common core behind the various Buddhist canons: the Pali suttas have close parallels in the Chinese Agamas, translations of Sanskrit and Prakrit texts preserved by other early schools such as the Sarvastivada, and where the two independently transmitted collections agree closely in content despite centuries of separate transmission, scholars take this as evidence for a shared early stratum of teaching predating the sectarian divisions. Where the collections diverge, in emphasis, added material, or organisation, scholars attribute the differences to later sectarian development, a finding consistent with Theravada's own claim to conservatism without settling the further, more contested, question of how close the earliest layer comes to the Buddha's own words.