________________
APRIL, 1888.)
BUDDHIST LITERATURE OF CEYLON.
103
receive additional support from the well- the Turnour recension of the Mahávarsa. known circumstance that in all ages both the The former of these passages, however, neither students of the Vedas and the disciples of mentions Mahinda nor his Sinhalese comBaddhism alike received their only legitimate mentaries : on the contrary, it distinctly states teaching from the living voice of a master, even that both the text and the commentary of the when written books were abundantly accessible. Pitaka, which were then committed to
The legends regarding the translations of the writing, were in the Pâli language. The commentaries on the Tripitaka in the Sinhalese whole legend, indeed, seems clearly to belong language, and more particularly the additional to much more modern times, when Sinhalese Atthakatha of Mahinda himself, belong to books had ceased to be a novelty. It reads by this period of the history of this literature. the side of the other legends rather as an This tradition appears in the notice of Buddha- elaborated invention than an original tradition ; ghôsha in the Turnour recension of the Mahá. and with our present knowlege of the earliest varsa :30_" The Sinhalese Atthakatha are literature of Buddhism, the question of the genuine. They were composed in the Sinha- existence of these Sinhalese commentaries of lese language by the inspired and profoundly Mahinda cannot claim any serious consideration. Wise Mahindo." But the other authorities do not mention it at all. The more modern tra.
Period II. dition is thus stated by Turnour :31_“The From the 1st century B.C. to the 5th Pițakattaya, as well as the Atthakathá pro- century A.D.-This period opens with the pounded up to the period of the third convoca- restoration of the legitimate king Vattagamani, tion in India, were brought to Ceylon by Valakan-abha, or Valagamba, in B.C. 88," Mahindo, who promulgated them orally after a period of usurpation by the Tamils here-the Pițakattaya in Pâli, and the Alpha- of Southern India," following a time of civil katha in Sinhalese, together with additional and religious commotion. The loss of the Atthakatha of his own. His inspired dis- earlier literature may safely be attributed to ciples and his successors continued to pro- these disturbances; and the rise of the new pound them also orally, till the age of literature, which now replaced it, was one of the inspiration passed away, which took place in results of the royal patronage of the secerling this island (as already stated) in the reign of monks of this king's new Monastery of AbhaVattagamini, between B.C. 104 and B.C. yagiri." The origin of this new literature is 76. They were then embodied into books, the thus stated in the Dipavarisa :"_" At this text in the PAli and the commentaries in the time the Bhikkhus, who perceived the decay of Sinhalese language. The event is thus re- created things, assembled ; and in order that corded in the thirty-third chapter of the the religion might endure for a long time, they Mahawanso, p. 207 :- The profoundly wise,' recorded the three Pitakas and their commen&c. In the reign of the Raja Mahanamo, taries (atthakatha) in written books." The between A.D. 410 and 432, Buddhaghôsha text of the corresponding passage of Turnour's transposed the Sinhalese Althakatha also into Mahavasisa," as stated above, is precisely the Páli. The circumstance is narrated in detail same, with the exception of an unimportant in the 37th chapter of the Mahawanso, p. 250. particle, as the text of Oldenberg's Diparariusa : This Páli version of the Pitakattaya and the as also apparently were the equivalent texts of Althakatha is that which is now extant in Upham's Mahávanisa" and the Rajuralnákarilo Ceylon, and it is identically the same with the before the glosses were worked into them." Siamese and Burmese versions." The tradi- The language in which these books are assumed tion is thus made to rest upon two passages in to have been written in those glosses is
dir: P. lxft.
30 Journal As. Soc. Ben. VII. 932, 933 : Oldenberg, 2018. 31 Turnour, 251.
1 Introd. p. xxix. 33 See also Upham, I. 329.
3. The Rajávali (Uph. II. 224 with 226) puts his date considerably later.
35 Oldenberg's Dip. 207, 911: Upham, I. 218: II. 43, 324: Turnour, 207, and Introd. p. lxi. All the dates in this paper, unless specially mentioned, are taken, for the
sake of uniformity, from Turnour's Introduction, Appen.
* Hiuen Triang, (Beal II. 247) tells us that the monks of the Abhayagiri studied both vehicles, and widely diffused the Tripitaka. 31 Oldenberg, 211.
38 Turnour, 2017. Uph. I. 219 with 322.. "See also Upham, III. 115.
