Buddha's Words - Buddhism Bible

Buddhist texts can be categorized in a number of ways. The Western terms "scripture" and "canonical" are applied to Buddhism in inconsistent ways by Western scholars: for example, one authority refers to "scriptures and other canonical texts", while another says that scriptures can be categorized into canonical, commentarial and pseudo-canonical. Another division is that between buddhavacana "word of the Buddha" and other texts.

These religious texts were written in many different languages and scripts but memorizing and reciting the texts were of high value. Even after the development of printing, Buddhists preferred to keep to their original practices with these texts.