Introduction
Sariputta was one of the Buddha's two chief male disciples, alongside Moggallana, traditionally regarded as foremost among all the monks in wisdom and analytical insight into the Dharma.
Family
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The Buddha's Right-Hand Disciple
Sariputta is credited in later Buddhist tradition, particularly the Abhidhamma commentarial literature, with an especially systematic and analytical grasp of the Buddha's teaching, and several important discourses in the Pali Canon are attributed to him directly rather than to the Buddha. He predeceased the Buddha by several months, an event the texts describe as causing considerable grief within the monastic community given his central role.
This article follows the Pali Canon and its commentarial tradition as the primary early Buddhist textual source; where sources genuinely disagree on a detail (such as an exact parentage), that disagreement is noted rather than resolved into a single invented certainty.