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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.orgAcharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
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lies tlic justification of classing our text ils : Dhammapada Recension, although the fragments of the Kharosthi Manuscript on which it is bascu, leave its in the dark about its title. Further, we prefer to call it a 'Prakrit Dhammapada' inasınuch as the logical differentia of the text as a copy of the Dhamma. pada can be derived from its livguistic characterization.
3. Recensions and copies of the Dhammapada.--In order to determine the place of our text in the listory of the Buddhist literature it is essential that we should bave a closer acquaintance with the various recensions' and 'copies', of the Dhammapada that are 110w extant. Strictly, we can speak only of four recensions, 1:1.., the Pāli, the Prakrit, the Mixed Sanskrit and the Sanskrit, to which a fifth might be addel, riz., the Fu-khen-king, which is a Chinese Recension in translation. The four Indian recensions comprise not less than six copies of the Dhammapada and three commentaries incorporating the text.
(i) Pāli Dhammapola. Of the existing copies of the Dhammapada this is the best knowo and most complete. We have several editious of it in Singhalese, Burinese, Siamese, Devanagari, Roman and Bengali characters, of which the latest and best is the one published by the Pāli Text Society. The 'Xcellence of this edition is in a large micasure due to Fausbüll's edition, so well-knowu to the students of Buddhist literature. Fausbäll was perhaps the first to collect mumerous references coutaining parallels from Buddhist works in Pāli, Prakrit, Mixed Sanskrit, Sanskrit and from a few important Brahmanical works like the Manu, the Rāmāyalia and the Mahābhärata. Fausböll occupies the foremost place alike as an editor and a Latin translator. Bull Max Müller was the first to translate it into English. We have another English translation of the text by James Gray, three German translations by Profs. Weber, Schröler and Nenmann, and a l'rench translation by M. Fernando Hû. The text contains 423 stanzas distributed into 26 groups, cach of which is named according to the main theme of its component verses. It represents a book of the
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