Studies of the form and textual history of various Buddhist texts show that they tend to undergo three types of developmental processes. First, some texts, especially verse compilations, are expanded by the insertion of pattern variants, sometimes at great length. Second, shorter texts such as sūtras are prone to be absorbed into larger compilations and thus lose their status as independent texts. Third, voluminous texts sometimes come to be represented in manuscripts in abbreviated forms, for example containing only the first text unit, which are evidently considered to sufficiently represent the entirety of the text. These patterns are discussed with reference to texts such as the Udānavarga, Anavatapta-gāthā, and Mahāvastu, and on the basis of evidence from Sanskrit and Gāndhārī manuscripts.

对各种佛教文本的形式和文本历史的研究表明，它们倾向于经历三种类型的发展过程。首先，通过插入模式变体来扩展某些文本，尤其是诗集，有时会很长。其次，较短的文本（例如sūtras）容易被较大的汇编所吸收，从而失去其作为独立文本的地位。第三，大量的文本有时会以缩写形式出现在手稿中，例如仅包含第一个文本单元，这显然被认为足以代表整个文本。参照Udānavarga，Anavatapta-gāthā和Mahāvastu等文本并根据梵​​文和Gāndhārī手稿的证据对这些模式进行了讨论。