Scripture - Verse and Prose

When we read the Mahayana sutras, it may seem that the verse sections are there to summarize the prose sections. When I was young, I thought the sutras had a verse section because poetry is easier to remember by heart than prose. When the Lotus Sutra first arose, sutras were generally written in verse form and not in prose.

In the beginning, the sutras appeared in the form of verse that were passed on orally. So it is in verse form that the Lotus Sutra first made its appearance, and the prose sections were added later to expand upon and further the teachings in verse.

The reason for this is that for the first 400 years during and after the Buddha's lifetime, his teachings were transmitted orally, memorized, and recited . . . . In order to be easier to understand and learn by heart, the teachings were transmitted in verse form in a poetic language called Prakrit. This language had its own metric rules . . . .

So the earliest form of the Buddhist teachings were in verse, and only later, when the teachings began to be recorded in written form in Sanskrit, the classical language of religion and philosophy of India, did long prose sections, called sutra, emerge. The word "sutra" means "thread" in Sanskrit, so a sutra is a thread of prose that links and expands upon the verse form of a teaching.

---Thich Naht Hanh---