Prakrit Dhammapada

SR No.: 020564
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Benimadhab Barua, Sailendranath Mitra
Publisher: Satguru Publications
Publication Year: 1988
Total Pages: 331
Language: Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 14 MB

Page 66

www.kobatirth.orgAcharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Dharmatrāta is said to have been the ancle (rather material uncle, as M. Sylvain Lévi points out,) of Vasumitra.' According to Tūranātha, there were two Dharmatrātas, a Sthavira and a Bhadanta.? The Sthavira was a contemporary of the Brāhman Rāhula and one of the four teachers of the Vaibliā. şikas, the remaining three teachers being Ghoşaka (Ašvaghosa), Vasumitra and Buddhadeva (?). Candrakirti, too, mentions two Dharmatrātas, viz., a Sthavira and a Bhadanta. But Täranātha emphatically says that one must not confound the Arya or Sthavira Dharmatrata with the Bhadanta, for the latter was really the compiler of the Udānavarga. Beal, however, points out that the compiler of the Dhammapada is all along spoken of in the Chinese versions as Arya Dharmatrāta.
It will be going far away from the historical truth to suppose that one and the same individual compiled all the three copies of the Dhammapada, the first of which differed so widely from the rest in some important respects. The attribution of the texts with 900 and 1000 verses to one individual might be justified on the ground that they are substantially the same.
But even the Udānavarga as a distinct copy must bave been the work of an individual other than the compiler of the Sanskrit text with 900 verses. The two epithets, Sthavira and Bhadanta, applied to the name of Dharmatrāta, must, therefore, be taken to imply a real historical distinction in the individual and in time. But the question is whether these epithets refer to two individuals or to three. If Târanātha's testimony is at all to be trusted, Bhadanta Dharmatrata must be regarded as the compiler of the Udāpavarga. Beal is inclined to think that Arya Dharmatrāta, a contemporary of Vasumitra, was the compiler of the original of the Fa-kheu-king, recognised as a canonical
. Boal's 'Dhammapada', p. 9. • Rockhill's 'Odinavargo', p. xi. • Boal's Dhammapada, p. 9, f, n. 1. • Burnoaf's Introd. a' l' Ilist., p. 600. • Rockhill's 'Udanavarga', p. xi.
Boal's 'Dhammapada', p. 0.
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