General Sutra Section

The General Sutra Section (T. mdo sde མདོ་སྡེ།) of the Tibetan Kangyur is a collection of 266 sūtras, containing both Mahayana and Sravakayana sutras.

Among the best known of the large sutras in this collection are:

• the Bhadrakalpika (Toh 94)
• the Lalitavistara (Toh 95)
• the Laṅkāvatāra (Toh 107 and 108, from the Sanskrit and Chinese respectively)
• two sūtras known as The White Lotus:
  • the Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka (Toh 112) and
  • the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka (Toh 113) (aka Lotus Sutra)
• the Samādhirāja (Toh 127)

This collection also contains:

• two versions of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra (Toh 119 and 120), translated in the early period from Chinese and Sanskrit respectively
• a group of Sravaka texts
• and other texts

The editors for 84000 state:

This large section of the Kangyur is also sometimes called mdo mang (“the many sūtras”) or mdo sna tshogs (“miscellaneous sūtras”). In the Degé Kangyur it contains 266 works, while in other Kangyurs the contents and their order vary somewhat. The texts range in length from a few lines to more than 2,000 pages.

It is thought that many of these works circulated in Tibet, during the centuries preceding the evolution and establishment of the different Kangyurs, in the form of varying compilations of sūtra works called mdo mang, some of which have survived.

According to the Degé Kangyur catalogue, the works in this section are arranged with Mahāyāna sūtras (Toh 94-286) first, followed by Śrāvakayāna works (Toh 287-359)‍—although not all Kangyurs and commentators agree on which texts should be assigned to these two broad groups. As Situ Paṇchen Chökyi Jungné, the 18th century editor of the Degé Kangyur, observes, sūtras of the Buddha’s third turning of the wheel of Dharma tend to predominate at first, but such categorizing is not always applicable and he himself, as he laid out the Degé Kangyur, simply respected the precedent set by past scholars who arranged the texts of the Tshalpa Kangyur.

Further reading:

• General Sūtra Section