Sutra (redirected from sutta)

Sutra: see Sanskrit literature.

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sutra

 Pali sutta

In Hinduism, a brief aphoristic composition; in Buddhism, a more extended exposition of a subject and the basic form of the scripture of both Theravada and Mahayana traditions. Since the early Indian philosophers did not work with written texts at all, and later philosophers often disdained them, there was a need for very brief explanatory works that could be committed to memory. The earliest sutras were expositions of ritual procedures, but their use spread, and eventually nearly all Indian philosophical systems had their own sutras. See also Avatamsaka-sutra, Diamond Sutra, Lotus Sutra, Tripitaka.

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Sutra 

an ancient Indian treatise dealing with such subjects as philosophy, morals, politics, law, or grammar and presented in the form of a collection of didactic aphorisms. Sutras appeared in the middle of the first millennium B.C. Philosophical sutras are thought to have appeared, in the form in which they have come down to us, in the fifth century A.D.; the dharmasutras—anthologies which set out the law—date from the first to third centuries A.D. The famous monument of Indian literature, the Arthashastra, is also written in the form of sutras.