Mahā Nikāya
A living tradition within Theravāda.
Mahā Nikāya is a living tradition within Theravāda. Also written Mahanikai.
Origin
No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. No founding date: the Mahā Nikāya is the pre-existing body of monks 'who continued to follow traditional practice', named only retrospectively once the Dhammayuttika separated. Swearer and the Theravāda entry agree it has never lost its majority position in the Thai sangha.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Mahā Nikāya.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-maha-nikaya.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-maha-nikaya-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Mahā Nikāya},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-maha-nikaya},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.