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The Khuddaka Nikaya (-nikāya; "Minor Collection") is the last of the five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the "three baskets" that compose the Pali Tipitaka, the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. This nikaya consists of fifteen (Thailand), seventeen (Sri Lanka), or eighteen books (Burma) in different editions on various topics attributed to the Buddha and his chief disciples.
Professor Hirakawa Akira has stated that the Khuddaka Nikaya represent a stage in the development of the Pali Canon / Agamas in which new material was not added any more to the rest of the Sutta Pitaka, but was added to a Khuddaka Pitaka instead. This Khuddaka Pitaka was the repository for materials that were left out of the four Agamas/Nikayas (the Digha Nikaya, Majjhima Nikaya, Samyutta Nikaya and Anguttara Nikaya) and thus included both early and late texts. Some of the schools that included a Khuddaka Pitaka in their canons were the Mahisasaka, Dharmaguptaka and Mahasanghika. The Khuddaka Nikaya of the Theravada school is the only extant example of such a Khuddaka Pitaka.
Both surviving subcommentaries on the passage about reciters explain the apparent difference between the reciters as being, not a substantive disagreement on the contents of the Canon, but merely a nominal one on its classification. Thus they say for example that the Digha reciters did regard 15 as canonical but counted it as part of 10 instead of a separate book. Similarly, the more recent subcommentary, compiled by the head of the Burmese sangha about two centuries ago, says that 16 and 17 were counted as part of 11 and/or 12.
The full list of 18 books are included in the inscriptions approved by the Burmese Fifth Council and in the printed edition of the text recited at the Sixth Council.
:‘The Khuddaka Nikaya can easily be divided into two strata, one being early and the other late. The texts Sutta Nipata, Itivuttaka, Dhammapada, Therigatha (Theragatha), Udana and Jataka belong to the early stratum. The texts Khuddakapatha, Vimanavatthu, Petavatthu, Niddesa, Patisambhida, Apadana, Buddhavamsa and Cariyapitaka can be categorized in the later stratum.’
* Psalms of the Early Buddhists, 9 & 8 tr C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Pali Text Society, Bristol; originally published separately
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