A History of Pali Literature v2.c13.2

v2.c13.2

The Dīpavaṃsa¹ or the chronicle of the island of Laṅkā is the earliest known work of its kind. It puts together certain well-known traditions handed down among the Buddhists of Ceylon, sometimes in a clumsy manner. Its diction is in places unintelligible, and its narrative is dull and interrupted by repetitions. Though it is composed in verse, curiously enough the verses are, here and there, intervened by prose passages (cf. Dīpavaṃsa, pp. 33, 64-65). What inference should be drawn from the occurrence of the prose passages in a metrical composition is still a matter of dispute. The point to be settled is whether the traditions on which the Dīpavaṃsa narrative is based were prevalent all in prose or all in verse or in both prose and verse. Its authorship is unknown. The canonical model of this work is to be traced in a number of verses in the Parivārapāṭha of the Vinaya Piṭaka.² The Dīpavaṃsa is an authoritative work well known in Ceylon at the time of Buddhaghosa, and, as a matter of fact, the great Pāli commentator has copiously quoted from it in the introductory portion of his commentary on the Kathāvatthu. Dr. Oldenberg has edited and translated the book into English. He says that the Dīpavaṃsa and the Mahāvaṃsa are in the main nothing but two versions of the same substance, both being based on the historical introduction to the great commentary of the Mahāvihāra. The Dīpavaṃsa follows step by step and almost word for word the traces of the original. According to Oldenberg the Dīpavaṃsa cannot have been written before 302 A.D. because its narrative extends till that year. If we compare the language and the style in which the Dīpavaṃsa and the Mahāvaṃsa are written, it leaves no doubt as to the priority of the former. The Dīpavaṃsa was so popular in Ceylon that King Dhātusena ordered it to be recited in public at an annual festival held in honour of an image of Mahinda in the 5th century A.D. (vide Dīpavaṃsa, ed. by Oldenberg, Intro., pp. 8-9). An idea of its contents can be gathered from the summary given below.