Saddharma Pundarika

SR No.: 007677
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: H Kern
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1884
Total Pages: 2546
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 46 MB

Page 1390

INTRODUCTION.
xliii
the writer of La has omitted by mistake. There is, however, more agreement with La to be found in Lp than in the other two manuscripts. .
The arrangement of the chapters in La is confused by the accidental combination of a portion of Chap. XLVIII with a portion of Chap. L, while Chap. XLIX, omitted in its proper place, has been subsequently added at the end of the work. In Lp Chap. XLIX follows Chap. LIII, and, Chaps. L and LV being omitted, the full number of a hundred chapters is obtained by repeating Chaps. XLIX and C at the end of the work. As this confusion in Lp occurs in the same portion of the work as that in La, though it differs somewhat in its details, and as it has been shown above that Lp cannot have been derived from La, it is reasonable to suppose that La and Lp were both derived from some older manuscript, in which some portion of the middle of the work had been omitted or lost, and that the writers of La and Lp adopted different modes of supplying the deficiency from other manuscripts. This confusion does not occur in B29 and J15, which two manuscripts agree in arranging the chapters as they are placed in this volume; they must, therefore, be derived from the original prose Sad Dar through some collateral line of descent, independent of the manuscript in which the confusion originated.
In the metrical Sad Dar nine of the later chapters are scattered about among the earlier ones, thus the 82nd chapter occurs next after the 16th, the 83rd after the 23rd, the 84th after the 24th, the 85th after the 27th, the 86th after the 57th, the 87th after the 58th, the 88th after the 70th, the 85th after the 72nd, and the goth after the 73rd. And, besides this variation, a chapter about the advantage of daily ceremonies in honour of the guardian spirits follows the 65th chapter, a very long chapter about the season festivals is substituted for the 93rd chapter, and the 100th chapter is omitted.
So far as five of the scattered chapters (85-89) are concerned, the reason for their change of position was probably to bring them into closer connection with other chapters treating of similar subjects; but this explanation will not
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