Dhammapada

SR No.: 007674
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2540
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 45 MB

Page 444

INTRODUCTION.
xxxiii
The division of the Book into chapters, or rather Portions for Recitation, is found in the MSS.; the division of these chapters into sections has been made by myself. It will be noticed that a very large number of the sections have already been traced, chiefly by Dr. Morris and myself, in various other parts of the Pali Pitakas: whole paragraphs or episodes, quite independent of the repetitions and stock phrases above referred to, recurring in two or more places. The question then arises whether (1) the Book of the Great Decease is the borrower, whether (2) it is the original source, or whether (3) these passages were taken over, both into it, and into the other places where they recur, from earlier sources. It will readily be understood that, in the present state of our knowledge, or rather ignorance, of the Pali Pitakas, this question cannot as yet be answered with any certainty. But a few observations may even now be made.
Generally speaking the third of the above possible explanations is not only more probable in itself, but is confirmed by parallel instances in literatures developed under similar conditions, both in the valley of the Ganges and in the basin of the Mediterranean.
It is quite possible that while some books—such as the Mahâ-vagga, the Kulla-vagga, and the Digha Nikâya-usually owe their resemblances to older sources now lost or absorbed; others—such as the Samyutta and the Anguttara-are always in such cases simply borrowers from sources still existing.
At the time when our Book of the Great Decease was put into its present shape, and still more so when a Book of the Great Decease was first drawn up, there may well have been some reliable tradition as to the events that took place, and as to the subjects of his various discourses, on the Buddha's last journey. He had then been a public Teacher for forty-five years; and his system of doctrine, which is really, on the whole, a very simple one, had already been long ago elaborated, and applied in numerous discourses to almost every conceivable variety of circumstances. What he then said would most naturally be, as it is represented to have been, a final recapitulation of the most [1]
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