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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.orgAcharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
( x )
and the Udanavarga verses are not exact counterparts of any previous group. They are on the contrary a combination of verses found in all the previous groups, supplemented by a few which were newly constructed by the compiler of the Sanskrit text. Though the counterparts of any of the groups is not to be found in the Fa-kheu-king and its commentary, it is very likely that some sort of transformation also took place in their originals. Nevertheless, the Prakrit verses cannot be satisfactorily accounted for otherwise than by the hypothesis that they are a combination of elements from two older texts, viz., the Fa kheu-king original and the Mahāvastu Dhammapada.
Thus applying the twofold process of multiplication of common verses as a test of chronology, we are led to think that the Prakrit text occupies a central position, it being later than the Pali, the Fa-kheu-king original and the Mahāvastu Dhammapada, and earlier than the text portion of the Chuh-yau-king and the Udanavarga. The Prakrit text with some 600 verses was a combination of two older texts with 500 and 700 verses, just as the Fa-kheu-king, considered as a Chinese recension in translation, was a combination, with its 752 verses, of three older texts with 500, 700 and 900 verses.
(c) Argument from traditions-The reader has already been referred (on p. xix) to a tradition in the Chronicles of Ceylon proving that the Dhammapada was a well-known Pali work in the time of King Asoka'. The internal evidence of the work does not help us much in determining its date of compilation. The Nagavagga contains an interesting verse" moralising upon the behaviour of a state elephant, named Dhanapalaka, when the animal was first caught and put under training. It appears from the commentary that the elephant
M. Sylvain Lévi says, "The tradition that the Appamadavagga of the Pali was constructed in the time of Asoka cannot but be a fiction, and the extraordinary variety of the verses in different recensions of the chapter proves it clearly" (J. A, xx. 1912, p. 226).
• Nagav. v. 5 Dhanapalako nama kuñjaro kuţukappabledano dunnivarayo, Baddho kabalaro na Uhuñjati sumarati nugavanassa kujari.
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