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xxxiv THE BOOK OF THE GREAT DECEASE.
important and characteristic tenets of his religion. But these are, of course, precisely those subjects which are most fully and most frequently dealt with in other parts of the Pâli Pitakas. No record of his actual words could have been preserved. It is quite evident that the speeches placed in the Teacher's mouth, though formulated in the first person, in direct narrative, are only intended to be summaries, and very short summaries, of what was said on these occasions. Now if corresponding summaries of his previous teaching had been handed down in the Order, and were in constant use among them, at the time when the Book of the Great Decease was put together, it would be a safe and easy method to insert such previously existing summaries in the historical account as having been spoken at the places where the Teacher was traditionally believed to have spoken on the corresponding doctrines. In the historical book the simple summaries would sufficiently answer every purpose; but when each particular matter became the subject of a separate book or division of a book, the same summaries would be included, but would be amplified and elucidated. And this is in fact the relation in which several of the recurring passages, as found in the Book of the Great Decease, stand to the same passages when found elsewhere.
On the other hand, some of the recurring passages do not consist of such summaries, but are actual episodes in the history. As an instance of these we may take the long extract at the end of the first, and the beginning of the second chapter (I, 20-II, 3, and again II, 16-II, 24), which is found also in the Mahâ-vagga. The words are (nearly1) identical in both places, but in the Book of the Great Decease the account occurs in its proper place in the middle of a connected narrative, whereas in the Mahâvagga, a treatise on the Rules and Regulations of the. Order, it seems strangely out of place. So the passage, also a long one, with which the Book of the Great
1 On the difference see the note at II, 16. It affects only a few localising phrases in a narrative occupying (in the translation) thirteen pages.
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| SR No. | 007674 |
| Book Title | Dhammapada |
| 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 |