Vinaya Pitaka

primary religious text in Buddhism, first part of the Tripitaka - Pali Canon

Parivāra (Pāli for "accessory") 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. Because it includes a long list of teachers in Ceylon, scholars, and Theravada fundamentalists, in its present form some suggest the work may be written later than the Fourth Council in Ceylon in the last century BCE, when the Pali Canon was written down from oral tradition.

Suttavibhanga (, Pali for "rule analysis") is the first book of the Theravadin Vinaya Pitaka. It is a commentary on the community rules (Patimokkha). The general form of the commentary is that each rule is preceded by a story telling how the Buddha came to lay it down, and followed by explanations. Sometimes this includes further stories acting as "judicial precedents". It is divided into two parts, covering the rules for monks and nuns, respectively. The monks' rules are divided as follows: 4 rules whose breach entails expulsion from the community; the traditional understanding is that the o

Khandhaka is the second book of the Theravadin Vinaya Pitaka and includes the following two volumes: Mahāvagga: includes accounts of Gautama Buddha's and the ten principal disciples' awakenings, as well as rules for uposatha days and monastic ordination. Cullavagga: includes accounts of the First and Second Buddhist councils and the establishment of the community of bhikkhunis, as well as rules for addressing offenses within the sangha (monastic community).

In Theravada Buddhism, the Pāṭimokkha is the basic code of monastic discipline, consisting of 227 rules for fully ordained monks (bhikkhus) and 311 for nuns (bhikkhuṇīs). It is contained in the Suttavibhaṅga, a division of the Vinaya Piṭaka.