composed by shravasti dhammika using text from the pāḷi canon, it serves as an ethical commitment similar to that of the hippocratic oath, the japanese seventeen rules of enjuin and the jewish oath of asaph. the original oath is in pāḷi, a middle indo-aryan language current in north-east india during the first half of the first millennium bce, and now the liturgical language of theravada buddhism. the oath consists of a preamble followed by seven articles, each of them derived from four passages from the pāḷi canon.