Verses of the Senior Monks
The Theragatha ("Verses of the Senior Monks") is a Khuddaka Nikāya collection of two hundred and sixty-four poems attributed to the earliest generation of enlightened Buddhist men — the companion collection to the Therigatha. Like its companion, these are first-person accounts of this life: the hardship or insight that led each man to renounce the household, the struggle of training, and, for many poems, the moment of his own awakening, stated directly.
This collection is complete, all 264 poems across twenty-one books, organized by the number of verses attributed to each elder, from the Book of the Ones through to the Great Book, Vaṅgīsa's single closing poem. Each entry has the same reading guide, full Sujato translation, and self-check quiz as our other series.
The Book of the Ones (120 poems), the Book of the Twos (49 poems), the Book of the Threes (16 poems), the Book of the Fours (12 poems), the Book of the Fives (12 poems), the Book of the Sixes (14 poems), the Book of the Sevens (5 poems), the Book of the Eights (3 poems), the Book of the Nines (1 poem), the Book of the Tens (7 poems), the Book of the Elevens (1 poem), the Book of the Twelves (2 poems), the Book of the Thirteens (1 poem), the Book of the Fourteens (2 poems), the Book of the Sixteens (2 poems — there is no Book of the Fifteens, as no elder has exactly fifteen verses), the Book of the Twenties (10 poems — skipping seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen for the same reason), the Book of the Thirties (3 poems, including Sāriputta and Ānanda), the Book of the Forties (a single poem, Mahākassapa), the Book of the Fifties (a single poem, Tālapuṭa), the Book of the Sixties (a single poem, Mahāmoggallāna), and the Great Book (a single closing poem, Vaṅgīsa) — all twenty-one books, all 264 poems, are complete.
