The obsession with seeing portions of the Suttanipāta as early is a holdover of the mid-20th century enthusiasm for discovering a “Buddha before Buddhism”, seeking a “truly authentic” teaching before it was institutionalized as rigid doctrine. Somehow, this search always ends up conflated with the racially-charged effort to divest Buddhism of its “cultural” (read “Asian”) elements.

A new translation of the Sutta Nipāta which doesn’t shy away from its cultural context.