________________
180
BUDDHIST INDIA
no priestly work ascribed to an individual author can be dated much before the time of Asoka.
And yet another point, which will turn out, unless I am inuch mistaken, to be of striking importance for the history of Indian literature, arises in connection with the Sutta Nipāta. The fifth Canto regarded as a single poem, and about one-third of all the other poems in the collection, are of the nature of ballads. They describe some short incident, the speeches being always in verse, but the story itself usually in prose (tliough in a few instances this also is in verse). They resemble in this respect a very large number of Suttas found in other portions of the Canon. And even a few of the Suttantas - such as the “Riddles of Sakka," for instance (certainly one of our oldest documents, for it is quoted by name in the Samyutta') — are characteristic specimens of this kind of composition. It is, in fact, next to the prose Sutta, the most popular style for literary effort during this period.
This manner of expressing one's ideas is now quite unknown. But it has been known throughout the world as the forerunner of the epic. Professor Windisch has subjected those of these ballads that are based on the temptation legends to an exhaust. ive study in his masterly monograph, dlara ud Buddha. He says, apropos of the two ballads on this subject in the Sutta Nipāta :
“These two Suttas might have been regarded as a frag. ment of an epic had we otherwise found any traces of an ancient Buddha Epic. But that is not to be thought
Saimyutta, iii. 13.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
