There is no single system of Buddhist cosmology. Virtually every theological tendency within the Buddhist tradition addressed the cosmological sciences from its special perspective—seeing the universe as the stage for a drama of salvation cast in terms of its own particular philosophical and theological predilections. Buddhist systems are related not only to other Indian systems, for example, Hindu, Jain, Ājīvika, and so forth, but to Hellenistic speculations as well.

The single-world system that is particularly prominent in the oldest Buddhist texts pictures the cosmos as a flat disk with heavens and meditation realms above and hells below. Although the oldest tradition apparently limited its interest to a single-world system, a grandiose cosmic structure developed on the perimeter of this single universe. Traces of themes associated with multiple-world systems appear in texts of the Pali canon. A ten-thousand-world system is mentioned in the Jātakas...