Disclaimer


These indexes were built using Sujato's Sutta Database and the Search > Select function of the Unicode Document Processor.

These indexes were built from Bhikkhu Sujato's English translations – not from the Pālī! For some indexes, the suttas found were checked to make sure the English translations were indeed selecting suttas contaning the expected Pālī word(s) – but this is a small minority of these indexes. Proceed with caution!

The accuracy of these indexes is dependent on multiple factors:

  1. The accuracy, consistency and completeness of Bhikkhu Sujato's translations found on the Sutta Central website. Bhikkhu Sujato seems to have done a very good job with the first of these, but I cannot say anything more than "seems."

    Bhikkhu Sujato seems to be mostly consistent in using the same English word to translate each Pālī word, although there are exceptions. For example, Anukampā is sometime translated as "sympathy" and other times as "compassion." But there are multiple occasions where an English word is used to translate multiple Pālī words. For example, "love" is Bhikkhu Sujato's translation of mettā and there are 214 sutta links containing "love," but I could only find 87 sutta links containing mettā.

    As for completeness, this is by far the most complete digital English translation of the Buddha's discourses. But even then, there are shortcomings. Some suttas have ellipses – far fewer than most other (and incomplete) collections, but they do present a problem when trying to find ALL the suttas for a topic. For example, the first version of the "Mindfulness" index was missing 6 of the first 13 suttas in the Digha Nikāya because the section on mindfulness used ellipses which resulted in the "mindfulness & situational awareness" topic initially not appearing in DN 4, 5, 7, 11, 12 and 13. These links were added manually, but it is unknown if there are similar cases for "mindfulness" or any other search terms. So completeness is always going to be a problem – unless an index is manually checked, which I do occasionally do.

  2. Possible bugs in the Unicode Document Processor. It is a very powerful program for doing things like this. But I am the programmer AND the tester – a bad combination. All programs need to be tested by people other than the authors!

  3. My choice of search terms for doing the selecting. I find what term(s) Sujato used to translate a Pali concept, and I can select based on multiple terms being used by the Buddha (e.g. "emptiness" or "empty" for the Emptiness index). But some words are used in multiple contexts (e.g. "emptiness" or "empty" for the Emptiness index but that also includes "empty room", "empty hut", etc. and these must be removed in subsequent steps). Some words are used in many multiple contexts (e.g. "compassion" for both Karunā and Anukampā).
Because of this, I have given a rating to each index:

  ****Probably complete and manually checked to removed any extras
  ***Probably complete but Not manually checked to removed any extras
  **Maybe complete? Not manually checked to removed any extras
  *Known to be incomplete and/or known to contain extras


Sutta references without names are because there was no name given for the sutta in the Sutta Central website. When possible, I have included the first words of the sutta to give a possible hint of what the sutta is about but at times even this was not possible – e.g. because of the automated nature of generating these indexes, the Dhammapada references have no further information.

If there are quotes in an index's name, that was the search/select term. If there are no quotes, the the name of the index and search/select term are the same.

The number of suttas or number of sutta links in an index is based on the lines in the generated index. Some lines cover multiple suttas – e.g. "Emptiness" includes AN 3.183-352. But those suttas only reference "Emptiness immersion" and aren't really teachings on emptiness. So should that be counted as 170 suttas? I think not, but I left the reference in since that index is of all the occurrences of "emptiness"; hence I document 17 Sutta Links instead of 186 Suttas. When it says "## Suttas," the actual number of suttas is given; but if there are many links that cover multiple suttas or links that point to highly repetitious suttas, I only give the number of links as "## Sutta Links."

Use these indexes as a starting point – not as a final word on anything.

  -- Leigh Brasington


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Leigh Brasington / EmailAddr / Revised 23 Oct 25