In Buddhism, an āgama (आगम Sanskrit and Pāli, Tibetan ལུང་ (Wylie: lung) for "sacred work" or "scripture") is a collection of early Buddhist texts. The five āgama together comprise the Suttapiṭaka of the early Buddhist schools, which had different recensions of each āgama. In the Pali Canon of the Theravada, the term nikāya is used. The word āgama does not occur in this collection. Meaning In Buddhism, the term āgama is used to refer to a collection of discourses (Sanskrit: sūtra; Pali: sutta) of the early Buddhist schools, which were preserved primarily in Chinese translation, with substantial material also surviving in Prakrit/Sanskrit and lesser but still significant amounts surviving in Gāndhārī and in Tibetan translation. These sutras correspond to the first four Nikāyas (and parts of the fifth) of the Sutta-Pitaka of the Pali Canon, which are also occasionally called āgamas. In this sense, āgama is a synonym for one of the meanings of nikāya. The content of both collections, the āgama (here: Northern Collection), and the nikāya (here: Southern Collection), are dissimilar to an extent. Large parts of the Anguttara nikāya and Samyutta nikāya do not occur in the āgama, and several sutras/suttas are dissimilar in content. Sometimes the word āgama is used to refer not to a specific scripture, but to a class of scripture. In this case, its meaning can also encompass the Sutta-pitaka, which the Theravada tradition holds to be the oldest and most historically accurate representation of the teachings of Gautama Buddha, together with the Vinaya-pitaka. In the 4th century Mahāyāna abhidharma work Abhidharmasamuccaya, Āsaṅga refers to the collection which contains the Prakrit/Sanskrit āgamas as the Śrāvakapiṭaka, and associates it with the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas. Āsaṅga classifies the Mahāyāna sūtras as belonging to the Bodhisattvapiṭaka, which is designated as the collection of teachings for bodhisattvas. History Jens-Uwe Hartmann writes, It is clear that, among the early schools, at a minimum the Sarvāstivāda, Kāśyapīya, Mahāsāṃghika, and Dharmaguptaka had recensions of four of the five Prakrit/Sanskrit āgamas that differed. The āgamas have been compared to the Pali Canon's nikāyas by contemporary scholars in an attempt to identify possible changes and root phrasings. The āgamas' existence and similarity to the Sutta Pitaka are sometimes used by scholars to assess to what degree these teachings are a historically authentic representation of the Canon of Early Buddhism. Sometimes also the differences between them are used to suggest an alternative meaning