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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.orgAcharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
:( xxiii)
that the Chinese versions, as confessed by the translators them. selves, are far from being faithful' : (ii) that, as appears from Beal's translation of the Fa-kheu-pi-u, some of the verses of the Pāli. Jarāvagga are hopelessly confused and the order of some bas been violently tampered with. It is quite likely that the order was tampered with even in the original commentary. The number of - Jarā '-verses in the Fa-theu-king is said to have been 14, i.e., 3 in excess of the Päli, while comparing Beal's translation with the Páli Jarāvagga, we suspect that the right number is not 14, but 12, i.e., just 1 in excess of the Pali. The total number of verses in the Fa-kheu-king original was, according to the translators' own statement, 500, whereas we have seen on p. xi that by adding up the additional number of verses as distributed in the chapters corresponding to the Pali we get a total of 502. If the above calculation of the 'Jarā'.verses be correct, we at once get the traditional total of 500 by subtracting 2 from 502. The total number 12 of the verses of the Jarā-group can be accounted for by the fact that the one verse resembling the Pali was expanded into two distinct verses. If we can rightly suppose that the Divyâvadāna verses, were quotations (perhaps a little more sanskritised form of quotations) from an older Avadāna work such as the original of the Fa-Kheu-pi-u, the order of the verses must have been inverted in the older work itself, and this conjecture is fully borne out by the grouping in the Chinese translation The fact of inversion itself requires a word of explanation. One must admit that it
Beal's Dhammapada, p. 84: "......the words of Buddha are natarully hard of explanation. Moreover, all the literature of the religion is written in the languago of India, which widely differs from that of China.........So to translate thom faithfully is not an easy task ". (Translatora' Prefaco).
· The order of first 3 verses is exactly the same as in Pali. The 4th verse is a combination of the first foot of the Pali verso No. 6 and the counterpart of a verse liko the first in Prakrit. The order of the next 3 versea does not differ from that of the Pali. The next 2 versca correspond with the 10th and 11th of the Pali. The verse No, 10 is nothing but a counterpart of the second Prakrit vorse. The last 2 verses correspond with the Pali, Kos, 8 aod 0.
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