A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s5.180

v2.c19.s5.180

From among the learned works giving a poetical presentation of one or more points of the Buddhist doctrinal system, we call attention to the following. The Pañcagati-Dīpana, the "Illumination of the Five Paths,"³ is a poem of 114 verses. It describes the great and small hells and the other worlds, and enumerates the actions by which human beings are reborn in one of the five conditions of life, namely as creatures of hell, as animals, spirits, human beings or gods. The same subject is treated in the Lokadīpasāra, which was written in the 14th century by Medhaṃkara in Burma.⁴ In the 14th century one Dhammakitti wrote the Pāramī-Mahāśataka, a Pāli poem on the ten Pāramitās.⁵ The Saddhammopāyana, "Ways and Means of the Good Religion," deals, in 629 verses, with the fundamental doctrines of the Buddhist religion in general, and the ethical doctrines in particular. The Pajja-Madhu, "the Verse Honey,"¹ is a short poem in praise of the Buddha, composed by Buddhappiya in the 13th century. In 104 elaborate stanzas in partly Sanskritised Pāli, the glory of the Buddha is described and his wisdom praised. Telakaṭāha-Gāthā, "the Verses of the Cauldron of Oil,"² is the title of another ornate poem on the good religion of the Buddha. The poet is supposed to have been a monk who, though innocent, was suspected by King Tissa of Kalyāṇi of carrying on an intrigue with his wife, and was condemned to be thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil. This was done, but the monk arose from the cauldron, and sang the 100 verses. Before he died, he recollected his former existence in which he was a cowherd and had thrown a fly into a pot of boiling milk. In the poem, the "hundred verses" are found only 98 stanzas in elegant Sanskritised Pāli, in which, however, no reference to the legend is contained. King Tissa of Kalyāṇi reigned in the 3rd century B.C., but, according to the evidence afforded by the language, the poem could hardly be earlier than the 12th century A.D.³