This collection of sources includes materials from the Sutra Piṭaka and Vinaya Piṭaka related to the major countries outside Magadha and Kosala. The details are outlined in the Content. The form of the Table follows the style of those in the previous collections of source materials (2-1. Locations of Places Associated with the Buddha's Residence and Preaching in the Early Buddhist Scriptural Sources. Source material Part 1: Magadha; Part 2-1: Jetavana-Anāthapiṇḍikārāma [Sutta-piṭaka]; Part 2-2: Jetavana Anāthapiṇḍikārāma [Vinaya Piṭaka]; Part 3: Kosala). Since when editing the present selection we adopted some particular standards, explanatory notes have been provided.

Explanatory Notes

For the Table, we have proceeded on the basis of classifying the places associated with the Buddha's dwelling or preaching into "countries," represented in terms of the "Sixteen Larger Countries" that appear in the scriptural sources. Since this collection follows on from previous collections comprising Magadha, Jetavana-Anāthapiṇḍikārāma in the Sutta-piṭaka, Jetavana Anāthapiṇḍikārāma in the Vinaya Piṭaka and Kosala, the Table sets out the early Buddhist scriptural sources dealing with places associated with the Buddha other than Magadha and Kosala.

However, as is apparent in Article 15, "Janapada and Raṭṭha in the Pāli Buddhist Scriptures" that appears in Monograph 13, it is fair to say that in India at the time of the early scripures there was no concept of a "country" (i.e. raṭṭha) that was distinguished from others in terms of jurisdiction. "Country" was rather based on the concept of janapada, an ill-defined cultural area made up of regional and blood ties. As a result, the location of borders between the "countries" was vague. It is not clear, for example, if any two countries were independent of each other or if they overlapped. Thus it is difficult when the expression "other countries" is used to decide how to itemize them.

We have reached the following conclusions about the use of the word "country":

(1) We use the term "country" to refer to the "sixteen larger countries."
(2) The term "country" also includes geographical-political units such as gāmas (villages), nigamas (market towns), nagaras (cities) and raṭṭhas (territories, kingdoms), that express the multiplicity of the territorial units in the janapada, and
(3) Countries that are referred to as raṭṭha in the commentatorial literature.
There are many traditions concerning the makeup of the "sixteen larger countries", and it is impossible to arrive at a uniform list of them. Thus, here we treat as a "country"
(4) those "larger countries" identified by the various traditions as belonging to the group of sixteen. The literature associated with these traditions is listed in the Table in Appendix 1 and the list of source material in Appendix 2. These have been compiled and arranged by KANEKO Yoshio.
(5) Places which are only referred to as vague regions or directions and do not specify a country are treated separately.
Based on these criteria, fifteen countries (sixteen if Assaka and Bharu are counted separately) have been designated as "other countries," as seen in the Contents of this article. Thus when we add Magadha and Kosala, already studied, we have a total of seventeen countries in the Table. Since these include countries where the disciples were active and where the Buddha never went (sutras listed in the Table marked by an asterisk are those in which Sakyamuni does not appear), if we eliminated them and listed only those countries in which the Buddha set foot, we would have fifteen. These are numbers 1-13 in the Index, plus Magadha and Kosala. However Avanti (No. 12) appears only in one source, the Sarvāstivādin Shisong lü (Vinaya in Ten Recitations, T 1435), which cannot be considered historical fact.

According to the above criteria, we could easily exceed the number sixteen for the total number of countries. The fact that we have not done so is because while other countries exist, they are not mentioned in the sources as being places where the Buddha dwelled or preached.

The fifteen countries listed here appear according to the number of times they are mentioned in the sources.

One question we had to rack our brains over was how to deal with the names of places whose location and size were vague, and with the significant number of cases where we could not easily identify the Pali and the Chinese names. We therefore divided the work among assistants and had them examine the material and research how it should be dealt with. For example, should we organize the places as individual "countries" or as "cities" or "villages" belonging to one of the countries? If we decided it was a "country", whereabouts was it, and what was its scale, and if we thought of it as being a subject state to another country, what country would that have been?

In the Table, we find in Item I "Vajji", the name of the country of Videha included. This may seem on first glance rather strange. Videha was of sufficient size to be called a "country", but as a result of the above-mentioned examination of the material we decided to deal with it as part of Vajji. The same applies to Sakya and Koliya in Item 2, and Vaṃsa and Bhagga in Item 3.

This collection of source material has been edited according to the results of such investigations, and we have published our reasons for the decisions we have taken in supplementary notes at the end of the volume. The author names are those of our research assistants. This report takes the form of an article, but because specific problems could not be resolved, as mentioned above, I have to say that the results are self-limiting in terms of my intentions. In the descriptions there are cases where we find details like "the capital of the country of Surasena is Mathurā", but in fact there is no mention of such a country or capital in the early Buddhist scriptural sources; these placenames only appear in later literature. As I have already mentioned, the early sources have hardly any sense of the concept of raṭṭha, and so there was no concept of "capital" either. We have had to use this kind of information because for the purposes of this collection of sources it was necessary for us to organize cities and villages according to the country they were part of.

Places that had previously remained obscure have now been subjected to concentrated scrutiny, with the result that some places have been identified that should have been included in the previously pubished articles on Magadha and Kosala. As I wrote in the Introduction, we considered publishing in this collection a further volume of notes and corrections and so finalize it, but rather than simply adding notes and corrections we added special Appendices for Magadha and Kosala based on the results of our further investigations. This has resulted in a strange organization that includes Magadha and Kosala among the "other countries", but the circumstances described determined this course.

Despite the efforts that have been made, there are places still remaining whose size and location are unknown. These have been classified as "places whose location is unverified."

A map has been included as Appendix 3. It shows the countries mentioned in the Table and their main cities. It was made by members of this study group.

Finally I would like to mention that this collection is the fourth in the series tracing places associated with the activities of the Buddha. We have included Introductory Notes to be used with all four. They have been compiled based on examples of customary usage employed throughout and is published as a separate item below. A few items particular to the present collection have been added.