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The early Buddhist literature

The Anapana Text in its literary setting

The sixteen steps which spell out the Anapana practice are found in twenty-one short texts composed in the Pāli language, as well as a number of sutta texts translated into Sanskrit and Chinese. These originated in the Indian Buddhist movement in the 3rd and 4th centuries BC. This is the period between the death of the Buddha (around 400 BC), and the reign of the Emperor Ashoka in the middle of the 3rd century BC.

The literature composed during this formative period is known as the Three Baskets (ti-piṭaka in Pāli, or tri-piṭaka in Sanskrit). These are

A Vinaya Basket – The Basket of Monastic Discipline, rules for monastic life.
A Sutta Basket – The Basket of Discourses, some composed to attract new adherents to Buddhism, and some to teach its doctrines and practices to the monks and nuns.
An Abhi-dharma Basket – The Basket of the Higher Teaching, an attempt to systematise Buddhist teachings and philosophy.

The size of this body of literature

The vast scale of this early Buddhist literature can be difficult to appreciate. A complete set of it is known in the Pāli language, as well as in Chinese. The Pāli Vinaya runs to a thousand pages, and the collection of Discourses to five and a half thousand.

These texts are regarded as foundational or canonical by all schools of Buddhism. This is no single-volume Bible. A small bookcase is needed to house a full set of these texts.

Seven Vinaya texts have survived in these collections, representing the monastic rules of seven of the old Indian schools. Three of these rules remain in use today, one in the monasteries of South Asia, one in East Asia and one in Tibet. Two Abhi-dharma baskets are known, one from the Thera-vāda school of South Asia and one from the Sarv-āsti-vāda school which once flourished in North India and Central Asia, and was translated into Chinese.

The Basket of Discourses

The Collection of Discourses (the Sutta Piṭaka) contains five Nikāyas or collections of discourses. This early period of Buddhism, up to the reign of Ashoka, is sometimes referred to as the Nikāyan period. These five collections are

The Dīgha Nikāya (DN), the "Collection of Long Discourses".
The Majjhima Nikāya (MN), the "Collection of Middle-length Discourses".
The Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN), the "Collection of Grouped Discourses".
The Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN), the "Collection of Numerically-arranged Discourses".
The Khuddaka Nikāya (KN), the "Collection of “Minor” Discourses".

Individual discourses are often referred to by the abbreviations given above plus a number indicating which discourse in that collection it is. Different schools of Indian Buddhism maintained their own collections of these Nikāyan texts. The Pāli texts were maintained by the Thera-vāda school.

Anapana, a marginal practice in Nikāyan Buddhism

Pāli versions of Anapana suttas

Seen in this context, the fact that only twenty-two short discourses contain or mention the Anapana practice shows that it was marginal to the interests, practices and concerns of Indian Buddhists in that early period.

Twenty discourses which reproduce the Sixteen Steps, or refer to the Anapana practice, are found in SN 54, the 54th group of discourses in the Saṃyutta Nikāya. This 54th group is called the Ānāpāna saṃyutta (the Anapana group). You can read one of these suttas at SN 54.3

Two discources of the Majjhima Nikāya, also contain the Sixteen Steps. These are MN 62 and MN 118.

What we might call the definitive or mainline meditation practice in early Buddhism was Jhāna meditation. Once we understand the sixteen steps of the Anapana practice, we see that it is not a rival practice. It has the same approach and aim as Jhāna meditation, and appears to be a practical way of approaching that meditation.

The relative paucity of texts referencing Anapana practice may show it did not catch on widely and certainly didn't displace what was regarded as the definitive form of Buddhist meditation. But this may also reflect the increasing transformation of the Buddhist movement. An emphasis on knowledge and insight as the vehicle of liberation helped to marginalise both Jhāna and Anapana practices.

Chinese versions of Anapana sūtras

The earliest known use of the Anapana text in Chinese was made in the second century AD by An Shigao, an early Buddhist missionary to China who came from Parthia (in modern day Iran). This exists as the isolated sūtra, T602, known as the Anban shouyi jing. The number of Chinese commentaries devoted to this text shows it played a crucial role in the development of early Chinese Buddhist thought. The text of this was recovered in 1999 when a manuscript of Chinese Buddhist scriptures was discovered in a temple near Osaka in Japan. It shows considerable additions and differences from the Pali text.^{[Footnote 1]}

The complete Saṃyukta Āgama, a Sanskrit version of the Saṃyutta Nikāya from the Indian Sarv-āsti-vāda school, was translated into Chinese in the early fifth century AD. This contains fifteen discourses within the Annabanna-nian Xiangying (the Anapana group) (numbered as SĀ 801-815).

Footnotes

Shi Guo Huei, The Textual Formation of the Newly Discovered Anban Shouyi Jing, Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal (2008, 21:123-143) Taipei: Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies.