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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BUDDHIST INDIA
epic and drama lie close together. That the more ancient epics in all countries contain many speeches and counter speeches can be seen too from the Iliad. It is only in the later epic form that this dramatic element is kept in the background. So in the old-Greek drama also we have an epic element in the speeches of the messengers. But a poem becomes completely epical oniy when to the speeches in verse is added also the frame. work of the story in metrical form. And the last stage is that the speeches grow shorter, or fall out, and only events are given in verse." I
Both the general accuracy and the great importance of this far-reaching generalisation will be admitted by all. Now we have in the Nikāyas all sorts of the earliest forms of the evolution referred to. We find (in the Thera-and Theri-Gāthā, for instance) only the speeches in verse in the canonical books, and the framework of prose, without which they are often unintelligible, handed on, by tradition, in the Commentary. We find (as in the Suttantas in the second volume of the Dīgha, or in the Udāna) speeches in verse, and framework in prose, both preserved in the canonical book. And we find ballads (such as the two Suttas discussed by Professor Windisch) in which speeches and framework are both preserved in verse. But it is not till long afterwards, in the time of Kanishka, that we have a fully developed Buddha Epic.
Are we then to suppose that the Indians had a mental constitution different from that of the other Aryan tribes (after all, their relatives in a certain
i Windisch, Jara und Buddha, pp. 222, foll.