..续本文上一页, by Buddhaghosa. Buddhaghosa confessedly consulted various
[1. Mahâvamsa, p. 37; Dîpavamsa VII, 28-31; Buddhaghosha”s Parables, p. xviii.
2. Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, p. 351.
3. Dr. E. Müller (Indian Antiquary, Nov. 1880, p. 270) has discovered inscriptions in Ceylon, belonging to Devanapiya Maharâga Gâmini Tissa, whom he identifes with Vattagâmani.
4. The same account is given in the Dîpavamsa XX, 20, and in the Sârasangraha, as quoted by Spence Hardy, Legends, p. 192. As throwing light on the completeness of the Buddhist canon at the time of King Vattagâmani, it should be mentioned that, according to the commentary on the Mahâvamsa (Turnour, p. liii), the sect of the Dhammarukikas established itself at the Abhayavihâra, which had been constructed by Vattagâmani, and that one of the grounds of their secession was their refusing to acknowledge the Parivâra (thus I read instead of Pariwána) as part of the Vinaya-pitaka. According to the Dîpavamsa (VII, 42) Mahinda knew the Parivâra.]
p. xiv MSS., and gives various readings, just as any modern scholar might do. This was in the beginning of the fifth century A.D., and there is nothing improbable, though I would say no more, in supposing that some of the MSS., consulted by Buddhaghosa, dated from the first century B.C., when Vattagâmani ordered the sacred canon to be reduced to writing.
There is one other event with reference to the existence of the sacred canon in Ceylon, recorded in the Mahâvamsa, between the time of Buddhaghosa and Vattagâmani, viz. the translation of the Suttas from Pâli into the language of Ceylon, during the reign of Buddhadâsa, 339-368 A.D. If MSS. of that ancient translation still existed, they would, no doubt, be very useful for detrmining the exact state of the Pâli originals at that time[1]. But even without them there seems no reason to doubt that Buddhaghosa had before him old MSS. of the Pâli canon, and that these were in the main the same as those written down at the time of Vattagâmani.
BUDDHAGHOSA”S AGE.
The whole of this argument, however, rested on the supposition that Buddhaghosa”s date in the beginning of the fifth century A.D. was beyond the reach of reasonable doubt. ”His age,” I had ventured to say in the Preface to Buddhaghosha”s Parables (1870), ”can be fixed with greater accuracy than most dates in the literary history of India.” But soon after, one of our most celebrated Pâli scholars, the great Russian traveller, Professor Joh. Minayeff, expressed in the Mélanges Asiatiques (13/25 April, 1871) the gravest doubts as to Buddhaghosa”s age, and thus threw the whole Buddhist chronology, so far as it had then been accepted by all, or nearly all scholars, back into chaos. He gave as his chief reason that Buddhaghosa was not, as I supposed, the contemporary of Mahânâma, the
[1. A note is added, stating that several portions of the other two pisions also of the Pitakattaya were translated into the Sinhalese language, and that these alone are consulted by the priests, who are unacquainted with Pâli. On the other hand, it is stated that the Sinhalese text of the Atthakathâ exists no longer. See Spence Hardy, Legends, p. xxv, and p. 69.]
p. xv author of the Mahâvamsa, but of another Mahânâma, the king of Ceylon.
Professor Minayeff is undoubtedly right in this, but I am not aware that I, or anybody else, had ever questioned so palpable a fact. There are two Mahânâmas…
《The Dhammapada - Introduction》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…