Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

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clearer meaning, by putting into it the later ideas. And in the translation of single words, especially those of philosophic or ethical import, a connotation, which they had really acquired many centuries afterwards, is held applicable at the earlier date. In both these cases a better commentary could be drawn from the general views, and from the exact meaning of philosophic terms, preserved in documents much nearer in time to the Upanishads, though opposed to them on many essential points. As Professor Jacobi says':
LITERATURE
"The records of the Buddhists and Jainas about the philosophic ideas current at the time of the Buddha and the Mahāvīra, meagre though they be [he is speaking of the incidental references to the ideas they did not accept], are of the greatest importance to the historian of that epoch."
Of these records the Pali ones (thanks, in great part, to the continuous efforts, during the past twenty years, of the Pali Text Society), are very nearly all now available. We can say not only what they do, but (which is often of even more importance) what they do not, contain. The Jain records are unfortunately as yet known only in fragments. It is the greatest desideratum for the history of this period that they should be made accessible in full. The philosophical and religious speculations contained in them may not have the originality, or intrinsic value, either of the Vedanta or of Buddhism. But they are none the less historically important because they give evidence of a stage less Faina Sutras, 2. xxvii.