..续本文上一页; one, the king who reigned from 410-432 A.D.; the other, the supposed author of the Mahâvamsa, the uncle and protector of King Dhâtusena, 459-477. ”Dhâtusena,” I had written, ”was the nephew of the historian Mahânâma, and owed the throne to the protection of his uncle. Dhâtusena was in fact the restorer of a national dynasty, and after having defeated the foreign usurpers (the Damilo dynasty) "he restored the religion which had been set aside by the foreigners"” (Mahâv. p. 256). Among his many pious acts it is particularly mentioned that he gave a thousand, and ordered the Dîpavamsa to be promulgated. As Mahânâma was the uncle of Dhâtusena, who reigned from 459-477, he may be considered as a trustworthy witness with regard to events that occurred between 410 and 432. Now the literary activity of Buddhaghosa in Ceylon falls in that period[1].”
These facts being admitted, it is surely not too great a stretch of probability to suppose, as I did, that a man whose nephew was king in 459-477, might have been alive in 410-432, that is to say, might have been a contemporary of Buddhaghosa. I did not commit myself to any further theories. The question whether Mahânâma, the uncle of Dhâtusena, was really the author of the Mahâvamsa, the question whether he wrote the second half of the 37th chapter of that work, or broke off his chronicle in the middle of that chapter, I did not discuss, having no new materials to bring forward beyond those on which Turnour and those who followed him had founded their conclusions, and which I had discussed in my History of Sanskrit Literature (1859), p. 267. All I said was, ”It is difficult to determine whether the 38th as well as the (whole of the) 37th chapter came from the pen of Mahânâma, for
[1. ”Ungefähr 50 Jahre älter als Mahânâma ist Buddhaghosha,” see Westergaard, Über Buddha”s Todesjahr, p. 99.]
p. xvi the Mahâvamsa was afterwards continued by different writers, even to the middle of the last century. But, taking into account all the circumstances of the case, it is most probable that Mahânâma carried on the history to his own time, to the death of Dhâtusena, 477 A.D.”
What I meant by ”all the circumstances of the case” might easily be understood by any one who had read Turnour”s Preface to the Mahâvamsa. Turnour himself thought at first that Mahânâma”s share in the Mahâvamsa ended with the year 301 A.D., and that the rest of the work, called the Sulu Wansé, was composed by subsequent writers[1]. Dharmakirti is mentioned by name as having continued the work to the reign of Prâkrama Bâhu (A.D. 1266). But Turnour afterwards changed his mind[2]. Considering that the account of Mahâsena”s reign, the first of the Seven Kings, terminates in the middle of a chapter, at verse 48, while the whole chapter is called the Sattarâgiko, ”the chapter of the Seven Kings,” he naturally supposed that the whole of that chapter, extending to the end of the reign of his nephew Dhâtusena, might be the work of Mahânâma, unless there were any strong proofs to the contrary. Such proofs, beyond the tradition of writers of the MSS., have not, as yet, been adduced[3].
But even if it could be proved that Mahânâma”s own pen did not go beyond the 48th verse of the 37th chapter, the historical trustworthiness of the concluding portion of that chapter, containing the account of Buddhaghosa”s literary activity, nay, even of the 38th chapter, would be little affected thereby. We know that both the…
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