Vinaya Texts

SR No.: 007684
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids, Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2523
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 47 MB

Page 1898

cxxxvii
adhered to Kullûka's order of the verses, except in some cases where he is evidently in the wrong, and the transposition causes no great inconvenience. On the other hand, I have tried to remove the numerous palpable blunders in the readings of the editions, which are mostly due, not to Kullaka himself, but to the editors of his text. The notes show what has been changed, and on whose authority it has been done. I have, finally, added a selection of the more important various readings given in the other commentaries.
With respect to the translation, my proceeding has been somewhat different. Though I should have liked to follow in the text Kullûka's commentary alone, and to give the renderings of the other commentators in the notes, I found that to be impracticable. The bulk of my volume would have become enormous, and in very many passages I should have been compelled to declare the rendering placed in the text to be utterly erroneous. In order to escape these difficulties I have generally, except in very doubtful passages, translated in accordance with that exposition which seemed to me most reasonable, and have placed some of the other particularly noteworthy explanations in the notes. In a certain number of verses where the real meaning of the text is very doubtful, I have not gone beyond a literal rendering of Manu's words, which, like the original, may be interpreted in different ways. In such cases the notes exhibit all the various interpretations found in the commentaries. In a very small number of verses the explanations of the commentators have been set aside altogether for reasons duly stated in the notes. The length of my notes varies very much, according to the interest or difficulty of the subject treated in the text. Thus the summary of the opinions of the commentators on the practically important titles of the Hindu law, Manu IX, 1-219, is as complete as the state of the MSS. allowed me to make it. Almost all the explanations of the difficult philosophical portions of chapters I and XII have likewise
INTRODUCTION.
ness of the Nibandhakâras, who are as little to be depended upon for accuracy as Indian writers on other scientific subjects or as the European medieval writers on classical philology. They quoted mostly, if not invariably, from memory.
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