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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
The word is not known in India: it is not an Indian term. Buddhaghosa, it is said, repaired with his books to Pegu, and thence also dates the introduction of Páli as the sacred language of the Buddhists of Ava and Siam. Shortly after his time, or between A.D. 459 and 477, the other great Páli work of the Singhalese (the Maháwanso) was composed. Of the Dípawanso, another of their authorities, the date is not specified; but as it brings down the history of Ceylon to the beginning of the fourth century* when it was left unfinished, and as Buddhaghosa was the main instrument of introducing the use of Páli into Ceylon, it must be of the same period, or the fifth century. The principal Páli works of the South are, therefore, of a period considerably subsequent to the Sanskrit Buddhistical writings of India Proper, and date only from the fifth century after Christ. Their subsequent date might also be inferred from internal evidence; for, although they are in all essential respects the very same as the Buddhist works of India — laying down the same laws and precepts and narrating the same marvellous legends — they bear the characteristics of a later and less intellectual cultivation, in their greater diffuseness, and the extravagant and puerile additions they frequently make to the legendary matter. They seem also to be very scantily supplied with the Abhidharma or metaphysical portion of the Tripitaka, as compared with the Sútra and Vinaya. Such portions
* [Journal As. Soc. Bengal, VII, 922.]
