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INTRODUCTION
TO
THE TEVIGGA SUTTA.
THIS is the twelfth and last Sutta in the first division of the Digha Nikâya, which is called the Silakkhandha Vaggo, because the whole of its twelve Dialogues deal, from one point of view or another, with Sîla, or Right Conduct.
There is another Sutta sometimes called by the same name, No. 21 in the Middle Fifty of the Magghima Nikâya: but it has nothing, except the name, in common with the present. It is called Tevigga Sutta merely because Gotama is there described by the complimentary title of Tevigga, 'Wise in the Vedas;' and its full name is the Tevigga-vakkhagotta-sutta1.
I have made the present translation from a text constituted from three MSS.,-my own MS. of the Dîgha Nikâya, referred to as D; the Turnour MS. of the same in the Indian Office, referred to as T; both in Sinhalese characters and the Phayre MS. in the same place, in Burmese characters, referred to as P.
In this book we have Right Conduct used as a sort of argumentum ad hominem for the conversion of two earnest young Brâhmans.
They ask which is the true path to a state of union (in the next birth) with God. After arguing, in a kind of Socratic dialogue, that on their own showing, on the
1 It may be noted, in passing, that the substance of it recurs as the Vakkhagotta Samyutta in the Samyutta Nikâya.
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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 |