COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PALI SCRIPTURES: CASE STUDY OF THE DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANA SUTTA

Abstract

This research is a documented qualitative research based on 4 different Pali scriptures. It has three objectives: 1) to study the history and development of the Pali scriptures, 2) to study the content structure of the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutra in the Pali scriptures, and 3) to conduct and compare quantitative, qualitative, and grammatric analyses of 4 different Pali Tripitaka scriptures by using the Dhammachakkappavattanasutra as a case study.
From the study, it was found that 1) the development of the Pali scriptures can be divided into 3 periods, namely the oral tradition, the inscription era, and the publishing era. The contents of the Pali scriptures started to have a clear structure since the First Council and there are many changes to the structure of the scriptures especially during the 1st-3rd Council. 2) The contents of Dhammachakkappavattanasutra can be structurally divided into 3 parts: an introduction, a doctrine, and a concluding chapter. The main doctrine of Dhammachakkappavattanasutra is the Four Noble Truths and the heart of the Dharma practice is the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the Path of Concordance. 3) The contents of the Dhammachakkappavattanasutra from all 4 different Pali scriptures differ in 33 places (about 5.56%), 2 of which were in content segmentation (6.06%). There were 22 grammatical differences (66.67%), and 9 semantic differences (27.27%)