ABSTRACT
The use of the Pali term ‘Theravāda’ (‘Doctrine of the Elders’) to define their particular school reflects the fact that the Theravādins present themselves as belonging to that branch of Buddhism which has continued to preserve the ‘orthodox’ or ‘original’ teaching of the Buddha. Less chauvinistically, the term refers to the doctrines and practices of the one monastic school to have survived from among the unknown number of Indian schools that had branched out from an original Sthaviravādin (Pali, Therāvidin) trunk, itself the result of a schism early in Buddhist history. This survival of Theravāda is synonymous with the survival of its Pali scriptures, the only complete recension of the Canon extant in an ancient Indian language. In a wider sense, ‘Theravāda Buddhism’ is that form of Buddhist culture which has dominated religious, political and social life in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, and, until very recently, Laos and Cambodia as well. It has been the interaction of these two aspects of Theravāda—of the ‘school’ with the wider culture—which has given rise to the characteristic features of the religion’s history.
