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INTRODUCTION.
XV
author of the Mahâvamsa, but of another Mahânâma, the king of Ceylon.
Professor Minayeff is undoubtedly right in this, but I am not aware that I, or anybody else, had ever questioned so palpable a fact. There are two Mahânâ mas; one, the king who reigned from 410-432 A.D.; the other, the supposed author of the Mahâvamsa, the uncle and protector of King Dhâtusena, 459–477. 'Dhatusena,' I had written,' was the nephew of the historian Mahânâma, and owed the throne to the protection of his uncle. Dhâtusena was in fact the restorer of a national dynasty, and after having defeated the foreign usurpers (the Damilo dynasty) "he restored the religion which had been set aside by the foreigners”' (Mahav. p. 256). Among his many pious acts it is particularly mentioned that he gave a thousand, and ordered the Dîpavamsa to be promulgated. As Mahânâma was the uncle of Dhâtusena, who reigned from 459-477, he may be considered as a trustworthy witness with regard to events that occurred between 410 and 432. Now the literary activity of Buddhaghosa in Ceylon falls in that period
These facts being admitted, it is surely not too great a stretch of probability to suppose, as I did, that a man whose nephew was king in 459-477, might have been alive in 410-432, that is to say, might have been a contemporary of Buddhaghosa. I did not commit myself to any further theories. The question whether Mahânâma, the uncle of Dhâtusena, was really the author of the Mahavamsa, the question whether he wrote the second half of the 37th chapter of that work, or broke off his chronicle in the middle of that chapter, I did not discuss, having no new materials to bring forward beyond those on which Turnour and those who followed him had founded their conclusions, and which I had discussed in my History of Sanskrit Literature (1859), p. 267. All I said was, 'It is difficult to determine whether the 38th as well as the (whole of the) 37th chapter came from the pen of Mahânâma, for
1.Ungefähr 50 Jahre älter als Mahânâma ist Buddhaghosha,' see Westergaard, Uber Buddha's Todesjahr, p. 99.
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