Parivāra


Parivāra is the third and last book of the Theravādin Vinaya Pitaka. It includes a summary and multiple analyses of the various rules identified in the Vinaya Pitaka's first two books, the Suttavibhanga and the Khandhaka, primarily for didactic purposes. As it includes a long list of teachers in Ceylon, scholars, and even Theravada fundamentalists, recognize that, at least in its present form, it is of late date, some suggesting it may be even later than the Fourth Council in Ceylon in the last century BCE, at which the Pali Canon was written down from oral tradition.
Translation: The Book of the Discipline, tr I. B. Horner, volume VI, 1966, Pali Text Society, Oxford.
The book contains 19 chapters:
  1. catechisms on the rules of the monks' Patimokkha
  2. similar on the nuns' rules
  3. verse summary of origins; an action can be originated by body and/or speech, in each of the three cases with or without intention, making six origins in all; this chapter goes through all the Patimokkha rules for monks and nuns, saying which of these six are possible
  4. in two parts:
  5. # repetitions on types of legal case involved in offences
  6. # which rules for settling disputes are to be applied to legal cases
  7. questions on Khandhaka
  8. lists arranged numerically
  9. in two parts:
  10. # beginning the recitation of the Patimokkha
  11. # exposition of reasons for rules
  12. collection of stanzas
  13. on legal cases
  14. additional collection of stanzas
  15. on reproving
  16. lesser collection on disputes
  17. greater collection on disputes
  18. kathina: the process of making up robes
  19. Upali asks the Buddha questions, the answers being lists of five
  20. another chapter on origins
  21. second collection of stanzas
  22. "sweat-inducing stanzas": a collection of riddles ; perhaps intended as exam questions"
  23. in five parts:
  24. # formal acts of the sangha
  25. # reasons for rules
  26. # laying down of rules
  27. # what was laid down
  28. # nine classifications