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Cariyāpiṭaka

The “Basket of Conduct” represents an early systematization of the concept of the Bodhisattva and his path towards awakening. A selection of 34 past lives are told, each one illustrating a specific virtue developed by the Bodhisattva. It is a late text, without direct counterparts in the northern collections. Like the Buddhavaṁsa, it is part of an extensive pan-sectarian devotional literature composed in the second and first centuries BCE, presaging the birth of the Mahāyāna.