Whilst the mediatory role of the monk is implied in many texts throughout the Canon and, in some very specific ways, is treated explicitly in the Vinaya, certain texts like the Dhammapada and the Sutta Nipāta allow us to construct a normative picture of the implications of this role better than the great majority of other texts in the Canon. Not that either text is built around this theme. They are not, but they do have special relevance for an understanding of the role. A case can be made that, like the Dhammapada, the Sutta Nipāta offers a normative image of the monk and ties into this image the preliminary conditions – detachment and impartiality – essential for the monk who would be a mediator. This is not to say the normative monk described in this text would have performed this role, but it definitely creates the possibility that it could be so. If there is a problem here it is that the image given of the monk is surely of a hypothetical figure and stands in sharp contrast with the much more realistic image given in the Vinaya and the Dīgha and Majjhima Nikāyas.

The Sn is a text full of didactic verses replete with verbs in the optative, giving the text the strong impression of being injunctive in its intent, an impression strengthened by the constant use of privative nouns and particles of negation in many verses.