Every school of Hindu philosophy, Vedic guides for rites of passage, various fields of arts, law, and social ethics developed respective sutras, which help teach and transmit ideas from one generation to the next. The oldest sutras of Hinduism are found in the Brahmana and Aranyaka layers of the Vedas. Each sutra is any short rule, like a theorem distilled into few words or syllables, around which teachings of ritual, philosophy, grammar, or any field of knowledge can be woven. In Hinduism, sutras are a distinct type of literary composition, a compilation of short aphoristic statements. Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Sutra ( Sanskrit: सूत्र, romanized: sūtra, lit.'string, thread') in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text. A Sanskrit manuscript page of Lotus Sutra (Buddhism) from South Turkestan in Brahmi script A manuscript page from Kalpa Sūtra (Jainism) For other uses, see Sutra (disambiguation). This article is about texts in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
