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NOTE III.
THE SAME TITLE GIVEN TO DIFFERENT Works.
The Chinese translators in making new translations of foreign texts, often give as their reason for doing so that the former translation or translators could not be understood or relied on. But in explanation of this we must remember that the originals themselves in the hands of successive translators, though bearing the same name, were not always copies of the same works. For instance, in the case of the work Fo-pan-ni-pan-king, that is, the Parinirvana Satra, translated into Chinese by Pih-fă-tsu, between 290 and 306 A. D. We cannot doubt that the text used by this translator was another form of the Maha-parinibbâna-Sutta embodied in the Southern Canon
But how widely another work bearing the same title, viz. Mahaparinirvana Satra, and translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksha, the same priest who turned the Buddhakarita into that language, differs from the simple Satra just named, the following brief extract will show. We will select the incident of Kunda's offering, which is thus expanded in the last work:
MAHÅPARINIRVÅNA SUTRA, TRANSLATED BY DHARMARAKSHA.
K10UEN II, § 1. At this time, in the midst of the congregation, there was a certain Upasaka (lay-disciple) of the city of Kusinagara, the son of a blacksmith, whose name was Kunda ; this man, with his whole family, fifteen persons in all, had devoted himself to a religious life. At this juncture then it was that Kunda, rising from his seat, addressed Buddha
See some remarks on this point in the eleventh volume of the Sacred Books of the East, p. xxxvi.
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