The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature c8.19

c8.19

It is a curious circumstance that the thirty-seven items of the formula are enumerated in several passages of Buddhist Sanskrit literature without being called by the collective appellation, *bodhipakṣyā dharmāḥ*, e.g. *Divy.* 208.7ff. : *Pr. Pā. Ṣata.* 56–7, 133, 162, 1473; *M. Vy.* sections 38ff. The term *bodhipakṣāḥ* occurs in the *Pr. Pā. Ṣata.* (p. 1636, line 10), but the list includes more than thirty-seven *dharmas*. The numeral “thirty-seven”, however, is also found in the same book (p. 1410.19; 274.22). It may be inferred that the exact number and the name of these *dharmas* were determined at a comparatively late period. The Pāli *Nettipakaraṇa*, which dates from the beginning of the Christian era, mentions forty-three *bodhipakkhiyā dhammā*.² Aṣvaghoṣa mentions only twenty-eight items in the *Saund.-kāvya* (xvii, 24, ff.), and he does not use the term *bodhipakṣa*.