Brief History Of Buddhist Studies In Europe And Maerica

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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BUDDHIST STUDIES IN THE WEST
3. The book of ordinations (pp. 280–289). Burnouf says that these three treatises were based upon Pāli books but from Buchanan's description it seems obvious that, most probably, the second and also the first were written in Burmese. It is not clear whether Sangermano translated the Kammavācā from the Pāli or from a Burmese version. Buchanan himself did not know Pāli or Burmese but his long article is not only useful for the information which he presented for the first time, but also for some perspicacious comments which he made. For instance, he states categorically that Nirvāņa is not annihilation: "Annihilation . . . is a very inaccurate term. Nieban implies the being exempted from all the miseries incident to humanity, but by no means annihilation" (p. 180). Amusing is a remark by a Siamese painter on Devadatta: "Devadat, or as he pronounced it, Tevedat, was the god of the Pye-gye, or of Britain; and... it is he who, by opposing the good intentions of Godama, produces all the evil in the world" (p. 268). The translation by Sangermano and Buchanan of the Kammavācā has been of use to Burnouf and Lassen who were able to compare it with a Pāli manuscript in the Royal Library in Paris. The first reliable translation of the Pāli Kammavācā is due to a Wesleyan missionary in Ceylon, Benjamin Clough, who published an English translation in 1834.34 The Paris manuscript was used by Friedrich Spiegel (1820-1905) who in 1841 published the Upasampadā-Kammavācā in Devanāgari together with a Latin translation and notes: Kammavākyam. Liber de officiis sacerdotum buddhicorum (Bonn, 1841). Three years later Otto von Boehtlingk published the Kaṭhina-Kammavācā (Bull. hist.-phil. de l'Académie de St. Pétersbourg, I, p. 342ff.) and in 1845 Spiegel published three other Kammavācās in his Anecdota Pâlica (Leipzig, 1845, pp. 68–71).
In the year following the publication of the Essai sur le Pali, Burnouf published a small brochure of 30 pages, entitled Observations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'Essai sur le pali de MM. E. Burnouf et Ch. Lassen, in which he quotes the Mahāvamsa and the Pāli dictionary“Abhidhānappadīpikā. Burnouf continued his Pāli studies until his death. He collected much material for a grammar and a dictionary which have not been published. He planned to study in detail the canonical Pāli texts in the second volume of his Introduction à l'étude du Buddhisme
34 The Ritual of the Buddhist Priesthood. Tr. from the original Pāli work, entitled Karmawākya. London, 1834.
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