Buddhist India c19.18

c19.18

It is otherwise with the other three. We know that there were two great monasteries at Anurādhapura in Ceylon, the Great Minster and the North Minster. There the canonical books were handed down, in Pali; and commentaries upon them, in Sinhalese, interspersed with mnemonic verses in Pali. In the third century of our era some one collected such of these Pali verses as referred to the history of Ceylon, piecing them together by other verses to make a consecutive narrative. He called his poem, thus constructed, the *Dīpa-vaṃsa*, the *Island Chronicle*. The old verses were atrocious Pali, and the new ones added are not much better. Then, as the old ones were taken, not from one commentary only, but from several, we get the same episode repeated in different verses. Added to this the work was supplanted in Ceylon by the much better-written book called the *Mahā-vaṃsa*, or *Great Chronicle*; and was completely lost there. The present text, which is corrupt, has been restored, in the excellent edition by Professor Oldenberg, from MSS., all of which are derived from a single copy that had been preserved in Burma.