Sutta Nipata e-book
Translated by Lesley Fowler & Tamara Ditrich with Primoz Pecenko
The Sutta-nipata is one of the earliest texts of the Pali cannon, coming from the same period as the Dhammapada, before the monastic tradition was strong. It was created by people as they practised and refers to “the wise one”, rather than to monks or nuns. In the present translation, “the wise one” is referred to as female and as male on a roughly equal number of occasions. This translation aims to combine textual precision and a colloquial style. Natural Australian speech rhythms and some idiomatic expressions (skite, for example, is an Australian colloquial word for brag or boast) were chosen to reflect both the popular origins of the text and the audience to whom this translation is directed.