The Collection of the Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima-Nikaya) Set of 3 Volumes

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The Majjhima-Nikaya is the second "book" or Collection of Discourses in the Suttapitaka. It consists of 152 Discourses (sutta) and is divided into three Sections (pannasa) of fifty Discourses each, the last Section, however, containing fifty-two.¹ These Sections are further sub-divided into Divisions (vagga) of ten Discourses each, the penultimate Division containing the two extra Discourses. There are fifteen Divisions, five in each Section.

This present volume of translation covers the first Section and thus comprises the First Fifty Discourses. I hope to follow it with two more volumes for the Middle Fifty and the Last, or Further, Fifty (-two). My translation is based on the edition of the Majjhima published in three volumes for the Pali Text Society by V. Trenckner, vol. i, 1888, and Lord Chalmers, vols. ii and iii, 1898, 1899 (all reprinted in 1949, 1951).

Two complete translations have already appeared, the one by E. K. Neumann: Die Reden Gotamo Buddho's aus der mittleren Sammlung Majjhima-nikayo, three vols., Leipzig, 1896-1902; and the other by Lord Chalmers: Further Dialogues of the Buddha, two vols., in the Sacred Books of the Buddhists Series, vols. v, vi, 1926, 1927. Both of these works are now unfortunately out of print. Translations of individual Discourses have also been made and still appear from time to time both in the East and the West. They are too numerous to catalogue; but Professor Rhys Davids' translations of Suttas Nos. 2, 6 and 16, together with his masterly Introductions (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi), should not be overlooked.