sūtra

Sanskrit Noun

sūtra

scripture, discourse

सूत्र

མདོ།

佛经

Basic Meaning

Sūtras mainly refer to the discourses delivered by the Buddha and his disciples, and the Sūtra corpus is one of the three main sets of teachings which form the Buddhist canon.

Has the Sense of

Sūtras originally referred to the aphoristic sayings and discourses, although one can find many exegetical and descriptive sūtras. In the Buddhist tradition, sūtras are generally considered to be the words of the Buddha or his immediate disciples, in contrast to the commentarial or synoptic literature, some of which summarized and condensed the teachings in the sūtras.

Term Variations
Key Term	sūtra
Topic Variation	sūtra
Tibetan	མདོ།  ( dho)
Wylie Tibetan Transliteration	mdo  ( dho)
Devanagari Sanskrit	सूत्र
Romanized Sanskrit	sūtra
Chinese	佛经
Chinese Pinyin	fújīng
Buddha-nature Site Standard English	scripture, discourse
Jeffrey Hopkin's English Term	discourse
Ives Waldo's English Term	discourse, scripture
Term Information
Source Language	Sanskrit
Basic Meaning	Sūtras mainly refer to the discourses delivered by the Buddha and his disciples, and the Sūtra corpus is one of the three main sets of teachings which form the Buddhist canon.
Has the Sense of	Sūtras originally referred to the aphoristic sayings and discourses, although one can find many exegetical and descriptive sūtras. In the Buddhist tradition, sūtras are generally considered to be the words of the Buddha or his immediate disciples, in contrast to the commentarial or synoptic literature, some of which summarized and condensed the teachings in the sūtras.
Term Type	Noun
Definitions
Wikipedia	wikipedia:Sutra