Tipitaka is in pali language and in different scripts. As such the Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita was the Founder President of Mahabodhi Society, Bangalore. He came to Bangalore in 1956 June and started many spiritual, humanitarian and medical activities. As a part of spiritual program he started giving dhamma discourses lectures. He was a scholar and Tipitakaacharya, studied in Sri Lanka and partcipated in the ChattaSangaayana as an Editor in 1956. His Dhamma mission was so great from the day one he started Pariyatti, Patipatti and Pativedha. He was a great writer and author also.

He started Buddha Vachana Trust in 1965. He wrote and published many Dhamma books through this Trust. He started a monthly magazine titled Swayam Sahayaieself help which is the aim and motto of Buddhism. Because he knew that there are no Tipitaka Translations in Indian regional languages except in Hindi. So he initiated a great project of translating and publishing the Tipitakas into Kannada language. The program started in 1984.

It was a big task. First of all to train people who can understand Buddha Dhamma and Pali language. So he selected a few of his upasakas and started training them in Dhamma and Translation work. During that time there was no Pali text available in kannada script. So first of all we have to write the Pali original in kannada script and read in front of BuddharakkhitaBhante. He will compare it with the original pali text then approve Many corrections, again the final work. Sutta after Sutta we wrote in kannada script. Mr H V Srirangaraj, B V Rajaram, J Sreenivasa Murthy, H S Shivaprakash and B N Chandraiah. Were the team members, the first five were at translation work. Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita Thera was the Editor in chief and H V Srirangaraj and others were given one text each of 25 suttas to translate with the help of English Translations – published by Pali Text Society, London and to be read and approved both in letters and meaning by Acharya ji. It was a tough time to decide the meanings of the Pali words. So some rules, norms were discussed in the sittings of reading and were incorporated in translations. Translating a text is a another type of creative work which needs a lot of knowledge in the kannada language, The grammer of constructing a sentence, conveying the correcting meaning, readability and the poetry and prose constructions and many things that goes into the work.

H V Srirangaraju was in Govt. service and a good writer. B.V. Rajaram was a MA in Kannada and MA in Sanskrit, J Sreenivasa Murthy was a Sanskrit scholar, a lecturer in Sanskrit in MES College and Good writer in kannada. H S Shivaprakash was a good poet and a kannada Lecturer in Govt. College. Dr B N Chandraiah was a Hindi Lecturer in Govt. College. It was a good and dedicated

team which worked under the guidance of Venerable Acharya. It was not easy to work with Badabhante. He was a task master. Every day we have to report to him about the progress. If he is not satisfied about the words used or the construction of the sentence and any other mistake he used to make us re-write. It was all hand writing, hundreds of pages to written and re-written. He was telling that this is a pioneering work and work of Dhamma .So there should not be any mistake or wrong communication of Dhamma. Let us not hurry to complete the work. First you should understand the Dhamma in the sutta, then only you can communicate through words to public. Firstly HVS took to translate DighaNikaya. Majjima Nikaya first 25 suttas. JSM the 26 to 50 suttas of M N. HSS from 51 to 75 suttas of MN. BNM Jataka stories. Like this we were able to complete 13 volumes of 750 pages each. In the printed book – Left side page contains original Pali text and facing right page correspondingly the kannada translation. Bhante had the idea of the seeker of truth should be able to read the pali in original – the words of Bhagawan Buddha.

There are about over 100 volumes of Pali-Tipitaka only. The Atthakatha, Tika and Anya totaling about over 450 volumes. Now MBS -BVT has completed about 30 volumes. The work is going on. After seeing the Kannada Tipitaka Translation Project one Upasaka Mr. Anjaneya Reddy from Hyderabad took interest to do Telugu translations.  13 volumes have been done in Telugu. (List is attached)

The first writing getting ok from Bada Bhante and getting it hand composed, proof reading, printing and publishing all the works were supervised by B.V Rajaram under the guidance of Ven. Acharyaji. For that purpose Mahabodhi Printing Press was established by Acharyaji. It was difficult to publish due to lack of finance. The first set of 13 volumes were published by MBS-BVT, Bangalore with their finance. Then Ven. Acharyaji and Mr HV Srirangaraj approched the Govt. to help. After a long exercise at the Govt. level they agreed to give us some definite amount of grant. That is we have to print the 1000 copies and supply 500 copies to Govt. then submit the bill and get the amount back. Again it was a stressful exercise. But the Govt. of Karnataka, financial assistance was there in support of this Tipitaka printing and publishing project. Govt. of Andhra Pradesh also gave financial support for the Telugu project on the basis of Karnataka Govt. grant.

The Sacred Buddha Vachana has to be brought in all the Indian languages as Buddhism is being practiced by many Vipassana Meditation and Research Centre at Igatpuri, Maharashtra state established by Meditation Master Sri. Satyanarayana Goenka has greatly contributed in promoting and propagating Pali-Tipitakas by making Pali original text available in many Indian scripts. Now MBS -BVT project is using these kannadapali scripts of Vipassana Research Centre and Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi’s english translation to grasp the meaning.

After the passing away of Venerable Acharya BuddharakkhitaMahathera in 2013 at his 93rd years of age, Ven. KassspaThera President of MBS and Ven. Bhikkhu Ananda,  Gen. Secretary of MBS, Bengaluru, are taking the lead to do the work. They are the Editors now for this project. This is an on-going project which needs financial support to take Buddha Vachana to public. These volumes are given free as Dhammadana to genuine seekers of truth and readers. Now, we have a different translating team of about 12 members who are at translation work in kannada. Sri. Molakalmur Srinivas Murthy, Sr. S. Narasimahaiah, Prof. Mohan Habbu, Sri. Ramachandra S Habbu, Sri. Uday Kumar Habbu, Sri. Muniyal Ganesh Sheynoy, Sri. Aneesh Bodh, Smt. Rukmini Girimaji, Sr. Arun Kumar Habbu, Dr. MudnakuduChinnaswamy and Sri Parshuram. This is a brief detail about the Kannada Tipitaka Translation project.