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The Dhammapada - Introduction▪P28

  ..续本文上一页ha-dharmapada, mentioned on p. 497, be translated by ”the fourfold path of the Law

  ” It can hardly be the fourfold word of the Law.]

  

  p. xlix step by step, and it is therefore called patipadâ, lit. the step by step.

   If we make allowance for these ambiguities, inherent in the name of Dhammapada, we may well understand how the Buddhists themselves play with the word pada (see v. 45). Thus we read in Mr. Beal”s translation of a Chinese version of the Prâtimoksha[1]:

  

  ”Let all those who desire such birth,

  Who now are living in the world,

  Guard and preselve these Precepts, as feet.”

  

  

  

  

TRANSLATION.

   In translating the verses of the Dhammapada, I have followed the edition of the Pâli text, published in 1855 by Dr. Fausböll, and I have derived great advantage from his Latin translation, his notes, and his copious extracts from Buddhaghosa”s commentary. I have also consulted translations, either of the whole of the Dhammapada, or of portions of it, by Burnouf, Gogerly[2], Upham, Weber, and others. Though it will be seen that in many places my translation differs from those of my predecessors, I can only claim for myself the name of a very humble gleaner in this field of Pâli literature. The greatest credit is due to Dr. Fausböll, whose editio princeps of the Dhammapada will mark for ever an important epoch in the history of Pâli scholarship; and though later critics have been able to point out some mistakes, both in his text and in his translation, the value of their labours is not to be compared with that of the work accomplished single-handed by that eminent Danish scholar.

   In revising my translation, first published in 1870[3], for

  

  [1. Catena, p. 207.

  2. Several of the chapters have been translated by Mr. Gogerly, and have appeared in The Friend, vol. iv, 1840. (Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism, p. 169.)

  3. Buddhaghosha”s Parables, translated from Burmese by Captain T. Rogers, R. E. With an Introduction, containing Buddha”s Dhammapada, translated from Pâli by F. Max Müller. London, 1870.]

  

  p. l the Sacred Books of the East, I have been able to avail myself of ”Notes on Dhammapada,” published by Childers in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (May, 1871), and of valuable hints as to the meaning of certain words and verses scattered about in the Pâli Dictionary of that much regretted scholar, 1875. I have carefully weighed the remarks of Mr. James D”Alwis in his ”Buddhist Nirvâna, a review of Max Müller”s Dhammapada” (Colombo, 1871), and accepted some of his suggestions. Some very successful renderings of a number of verses by Mr. Rhys Davids in his (”Buddhism,” and a French translation, too, of the Dhammapada, published by Fernand Hû[1], have been consulted with advantage.

   It was hoped for a time that much assistance for a more accurate understanding of this work might be derived from a Chinese translation of the Dhammapada[2], of which Mr. S. Beal published an English translation in 1878. But this hope has not been entirely fulfilled. It was, no doubt, a discovery of great interest, when Mr. Beal announced that the text of the Dhammapada was not restricted to the southern Buddhists only, but that similar collections existed in the north, and had been translated into Chinese. It was equally important when Schiefner proved the existence of the same work in the sacred canon of the Tibetans. But as yet neither a Chinese nor a Tibetan translation of the Pâli Dhammapada has been rendered accessible to us by translations of these translation…

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