The Digha Nikaya, or "Collection of Long Discourses", is the first of the five Nikayas that make up the Sutta Pitaka, the discourse basket of the Pali Tipitaka preserved in the Theravada tradition. It gathers thirty-four suttas, arranged in three divisions: the Silakkhandha-vagga, comprising suttas one to thirteen; the Maha-vagga, covering fourteen to twenty-three; and the Pathika-vagga, running to the end of the collection. The suttas here are the longer ones in the canon, and several are among the most frequently cited texts in Pali Buddhism — the Brahmajala Sutta, the Samannaphala Sutta, the Mahaparinibbana Sutta on the Buddha's final days and death, and the Sigalovada Sutta on the duties of lay life.
This volume is Part 1 of the collection, carrying thirteen discourses.
Readers come to the Digha Nikaya for different reasons. For practising Buddhists it is scripture, read and recited as the recorded teaching of the Buddha. For students of Indian religion and early history it is a source document — the suttas record debates with brahmins, ascetics and wanderers, descriptions of court and village life, and the shape of the early monastic community, set down in a literary form built for oral transmission, with its repetitions, formulas and set passages intact. Anyone reading the Pali canon in sequence begins here, since the Digha Nikaya stands at the head of the Sutta Pitaka.
Sri Lanka has carried the Pali textual tradition for a very long time, and editions of the canon are a steady part of publishing in Colombo. This is a Part 1 of such an edition, for readers assembling the Sutta Pitaka volume by volume or wanting the long discourses on their own shelf.
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