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xiv
DHAMMAPADA.
MSS., and gives various readings, just as any modern scholar might do. This was in the beginning of the fifth century A.D., and there is nothing improbable, though I would say no more, in supposing that some of the MSS., consulted by Buddhaghosa, dated from the first century B.C., when Vattagâmani ordered the sacred canon to be reduced to writing.
There is one other event with reference to the existence of the sacred canon in Ceylon, recorded in the Mahâvamsa, between the time of Buddhaghosa and Vattagâmani, viz. the translation of the Suttas from Pali into the language of Ceylon, during the reign of Buddhadasa, 339-368 A. D. If MSS. of that ancient translation still existed, they would, no doubt, be very useful for determining the exact state of the Pâli originals at that time. But even without them there seems no reason to doubt that Buddhaghosa had before him old MSS. of the Pâli canon, and that these were in the main the same as those written down at the time of Vattagâmani.
BUDDHAGHOSA'S AGE. The whole of this argument, however, rested on the supposition that Buddhaghosa's date in the beginning of the fifth century A. D. was beyond the reach of reasonable doubt. His age,' I had ventured to say in the Preface to Buddhaghosha's Parables (1870), 'can be fixed with greater accuracy than most dates in the literary history of India.' But soon after, one of our most celebrated Pali scholars, the great Russian traveller, Professor Joh. Minayeff, expressed in the Mélanges Asiatiques (13/25 April, 1871) the gravest-doubts as to Buddhaghosa's age, and thus threw the whole Buddhist chronology, so far as it had then been accepted by all, or nearly all scholars, back into chaos. He gave as his chief reason that Buddhaghosa was not, as I supposed, the contemporary of Mahânâma, the
1 A note is added, stating that several portions of the other two divisions also of the Pitakattaya were translated into the Sinhalese language, and that these alone are consulted by the priests, who are unacquainted with Pâli. On the other hand, it is stated that the Sinhalese text of the Atthakathâ exists no longer. See Spence Hardy, Legends, p. xxv, and p. 69.
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