The first discourse the Buddha gave following his enlightenment was the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which was addressed to his first five monk disciples. It is said that when the Buddha preached his second sermon, the Anattalakkhana Sutta, to these same five monks they all attained arahantship, the highest goal of Buddhist practice. Thus the Anattalakkhana Sutta occupies a key position in both the history and doctrine of Buddhism. Yet the Pali and Chinese versions of the Anattalakkhana Sutta give completely opposite interpretations of the key term of this sutta: anatta. There is still no conclusion amongst scholars as to which one was the original teaching of the Buddha. This paper proposes to solve this problem by recovering the orignial form and meaning of the Anattalakkhana Sutta. This paper begins with an explanation of the differences between the versions, followed by a summary of the views put forth by the Japanese scholars Mizuno Kōgen and Hirakawa Akira. Believing that at present is not possible to conclusively determine the Buddha‟s original teaching on anatta, these two scholars have decided the best approach is to put aside the textual controversy and try to solve the problem from the standpoint of doctrinal exegesis. It is the premise of this paper, however, that a more thoroughgoing textual investigation should be carried out before resorting to doctrinal exegesis. Thus the third section of this paper makes a detailed philological investigation and analysis of the various versions of the Anattalakkhana Sutta. A total of 13 documents are examined on three levels, including 9 versions of the Anattalakkhana Sutta, the explanatory passages on the Anattalakkhana Sutta found in the Yogācāra-bhūmi-śāstra, as well as 3 versions of the Culasaccaka Sutta, since their narrative structure closely resembles that of the Anattalakkhana Sutta. The results of this multi-level analysis shows that the Pali version is in fact the original teaching of the Buddha, and that the Chinese version of the Anattalakkhana Sutta in the Khandhavagga of the Samyutta Nikaya is corrupt. The final section is an attempt to determine when and how this corruption came about.
