A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s6.t1.23

v2.c19.s6.t1.23

We glean from one of the Mahāvastu quotations,² that there was a Dharmapada in the Sanskrit Canon, divided into Vargas, after the style of the Pāli Dharmapada. This Sanskrit version was not identical with that of the Pāli Canon, but both versions had an original stock of verses in common, and were arranged on one and the same principle. The collection of verses which belonged to the original Canon, also served as a prototype and as a foundation for more comprehensive anthologies, which were compiled in later times, and were widely propagated in Central Asia, Tibet and China. Thus, for instance, there is a Chinese anthology with the same 26 sections (Vargas) as the Pāli Dhammapada though it has 13 additional sections.³ Fragments of a Sanskrit anthology have been found in Central Asia, which were at first regarded as passages from recensions of the Dharmapada, but which in reality belong to the Udāna-Varga, which is known to us from a Tibetan translation. This anthology was compiled by Dharmatrāta, who, according to Tāranātha, is supposed to have lived in King Kaniṣka's day. In the Tibetan version, it contains not only 375 verses, corresponding to verses of the Dhammapada, but also the greater part of the verses of the Udāna, and numerous verses which have parallels in the Suttanipāta and other portions of the Pāli Canon.⁴ Another anthology was written in a Prākrit dialect, which is a later form of the North-west Indian dialect familiar to us from the Shāhbāzgarhī rock edicts of Aśoka, and compiled after the pattern, and with the help of the Dhammapada or some similar verse collection of the Sanskrit Canon, or the original Canon. Fragments of this anthology have come down to us in a few leaves of a manuscript written in the Kharoṣṭhī script, which M. Petroffsky and J. L. Dutreuil de Rhins had found at Khotan, and brought to Europe.[^1)