Dīrgha Āgama

In Buddhism, an āgama (Sanskrit and Pāli for "sacred work" or "scripture") is a collection of Early Buddhist scriptures. The five āgamas together comprise the Suttapiṭaka of the early Buddhist schools, which had different recensions of each āgama. In the Pali Canon of the Theravada, the term nikāya is used in place of āgama.

Āgamas of various schools are preserved in Chinese translation, and portions also survive in Tibetan translation and in Sanskrit.

In Buddhism, the term āgama is used to refer to a collection of discourses (Sanskrit: sutra; Pali: sutta) of the early Buddhist schools, which were preserved primarily in Chinese translation, with substantial material also surviving in Sanskrit and lesser but still significant amounts surviving in Gāndhārī and in Tibetan translation. These sutras correspond to the first four Nikayas (and parts of the fifth) of the Sutta-Pitaka of the Pali Canon, which are also occasionally called agamas. In this sense, āgama is a synonym for one of the meanings of nikaya.

Sometimes the word āgama is used to refer not to a specific scripture, but to a class of scripture. In this case, its meaning can also encompass the Sutta-pitaka, which the Theravada tradition holds to be the oldest and most historically accurate representation of the teachings of Gautama Buddha, together with the Vinaya-pitaka.

In the 4th century Mahāyāna abhidharma work Abhidharmasamuccaya, Asaṅga refers to the collection which contains the āgamas as the Śrāvakapiṭaka, and associates it with the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas. Asaṅga classifies the Mahāyāna sūtras as belonging to the Bodhisattvapiṭaka, which is designated as the collection of teachings for bodhisattvas.

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