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The Madhyama Āgama ( Chinese: 中阿含經; pinyin: Zhong Ahan Jing [1]) is an early Indian Buddhist text, of which currently only a Chinese translation is extant ( Taishō Tripiṭaka 26). [1] The title means "Middle Collection." [2] It is one of the four Āgamas of the Sanskritic Sūtra Piṭaka located in the Chinese Buddhist Canon and contains 222 discourses in 18 chapters. [3] Its Pali equivalent, the Majjhima Nikaya, contains 152 discourses in 15 chapters. [3]
The earliest Chinese translation of the agama dates to 397–398 C.E. [3] P.V. Bapat believes the original source for the Chinese translation was in a form of Prakrit, closer to Pali than Sanskrit. [4] The text is believed to be from the Sarvāstivāda tradition. [3] [5]
There are numerous parallels between the discourses in the Madhyama Āgama and discourses in the Sutta Piṭaka. [6]
...of the two hundred and twenty-two sutras of T. 26, only one hundred and three have their counterpart in the Majjhimanikāya; fourteen have their counterpart in the Dīghanikāya, seventeen in the Saṃyuttanikāya, and eighty-seven in the Aṅguttaranikāya. Fourteen of the two hundred and twenty-two sutras of T. 26 have no known parallel in the Pāli corpus. [6]
Translation of the Madhyama Āgama into English began in 2006 with Marcus Bingenheimer as chief editor and Bhikkhu Analayo and Rodney S. Bucknell as co-editors. [7] The first of three volumes was published in 2013. [8]