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 598

INTRODUCTION.
141
time when it was first used in a figurative sense: and that previous use allows only of the interpretation given above. Perhaps, however, Mr. Da Cunha is only copying (not very exactly) Mr. Alabaster, who has said, 'Buddha, as I have tried to show in other parts of this book, did not attempt to teach the beginning of existence, but assumed it as a rolling circle of causes or effects. This was his circle or wheel of the law 1.'
Mr. Alabaster therefore calls his very useful book on Siamese Buddhism, “The Wheel of the Law;'- an expression which he on the first page of his preface takes to be about equivalent to Buddhism. But his theory of the meaning of the term seems to be based upon a misunderstanding of a passage in the Siamese ‘Life of Buddha,' which he there translates. At page 78 he renders his text, “The Holy Wheel which the Law taught is plenteous in twelve ways, and he explains this on p. 169 as referring to the twelve Nidanas, the chain of causes and effects. But the passage in the Siamese text is evidently a reminiscence of the 'twelvefold manner' spoken of in the same connection in our Sutta ($ 21), and does not refer to the Nidânas at all.
A better comment on the word is the legend of the Treasure of the Wheel, which will be found below in the "Book of the Great King of Glory?,' a passage which shows that this figure belonged to that circle of poetical imagery which the early Buddhists so often borrowed from the previous poets of Vedic literature to aid them in their attempts to describe the most important events in the life of their revered Teacher. And, like the day of Pentecost by the early Christians, this Inauguration of the Kingdom of Righteousness was rightly regarded by them as a turning-point in the history of their faith. We find this even in the closing sections of our Sutta; and in later times the poets of every Buddhist clime have vied one with another in endeavouring to express their sense of the importance of the occasion.
"The evening was like a lovely maiden; the stars
1.Wheel of the Law,' p. 288.
* Chap. I, $$ 10–20.
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