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Manual of Indian Buddhism c3.s2: 2. Literature Subsidiary to the Canon. Works on Legendary and Semi-Historical Subjects. Religious Poetry

Manual of Indian Buddhism c3.s2

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English

2. Literature Subsidiary to the Canon. Works on Legendary and Semi-Historical Subjects. Religious Poetry

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The sacred books have naturally given rise to a subsidiary literature in the form of commentaries, manuals, treatises, and the like². The mass of that literature, both in the S. and the N., is so immense that only a very few of the most noteworthy productions can here be treated of.

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² The MSS of Pāli sacred books and their commentaries in the India Office Library have been described by OLDENBERG in JPTS of 1882 (pp. 59-85); a list of the collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale has been published by L. FEER, ib. pp. 32-37; see in that same number of the Journal the lists by FRANKFURTER, and by L. DE ZOYSA; the Bibliography of texts in FRANKFURTER'S Handbook XV-XVIII; of translations, XIX.

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Beginning with the South, we first have the Aṭṭhakathā, a body of commentaries on the various parts of the Tipiṭaka³. According to Simhalese tradition the Aṭṭhakathā was fixed at the first Convocation, and rehearsed at the two following Councils; it was introduced by Mahendra along with the holy texts into Ceylon, and translated by the same into Simhalese; it was not put to writing before the reign of Abhaya Vaṭṭagāmani, in the last century B. C., and retranslated into Pāli by Buddhaghoṣa about A. D. 420⁴. It is easy to see that those statements are a mixture of dogmatical fiction and truth. This much is well ascertained that there existed a collection of commentaries of semi-sacred character under the name of Aṭṭhakathā in the time when the Dīpavaṃsa was written, about A. D. 300, but we are in the dark about the relative age of its various portions, and we possess as yet no sufficient data for making out what has been added or changed after A. D. 300, either by Buddhaghoṣa or by others. The story in the Mahāvaṃsa according to which Buddhaghoṣa translated the whole Aṭṭhakathā is in conflict with some well established facts. The commentary on the Thera- and Therīgāthā titled Paramattha-Dīpanī, and some other commentaries have been composed by Dhammapāla of Kāñcīpura, and not by Buddhaghoṣa¹. Further it should be noted that Buddhaghoṣa in his Samanta-Pāsādikā quotes the Dīpavaṃsa by name. The Aṭṭhakathā being professedly older then the chronicle, his work cannot have been a simple translation, or he must have found those quotations in his original and in that case some portions of the Aṭṭhakathā must have been posterior to the chronicle.

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³ The titles enumerated in CHILDERS s. v. Aṭṭhakathā; Saddh. S. p. 56; MINAYEF Recherches I, 258, from the Gandhavaṃsa.

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⁴ Dīp. XX, 20; Mahāvaṃsa, p. 205 ff. Sum. Vil. I, p. 1. Saddh. S. p. 52 ff. HARDY, E. M. p. 171; cp. M. of B. p. 509 ff.

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¹ Cp. ED. MÜLLER in the Pref. to his edition of the Param.-Dip. and the authorities quoted above.

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Notwithstanding some doubts about the absolute correctness of the Sinhalese accounts, we may hold that the principal Pāli commentaries on canonical works are due to Buddhaghoṣa, as well as the Visuddhimagga², a kind of cyclopaedia of the Buddhist creed. Another work that has been characterized as "a short encyclopaedia of the Buddhist theology and cosmology" is the Sārasaṅgaha³. The commentary on the treatise Kathāvatthu⁴ contains much about the tenets of the various sects.

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² Cp. HARDY, M. of B., p. 512. For an abstract of contents by CARPENTER, see JPTS for 1890, and cp. A. C. WARREN in Trans. 9th Congr. of Or. I, 392.

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³ See K. E. NEUMANN „Des Sārasaṅghaho erstes Kapitel“, text and translation (Leipzig 1891), p. 6.

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⁴ Kathāvatthuppakaraṇaṭṭhakathā, ed. by MINAYEF JPTS of 1889.

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A dogmatical treatise in the form of dialogues between king Milinda⁵ and the Buddhist sage Nāgasena is the work titled Milinda-Pañha⁶. Date and source of the work are uncertain, but for various reasons it must be posterior to the beginning of our era, and have been composed in the North of India, though all quotations from Scripture in it are from the Pāli canon⁷.

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⁵ The Skr. form of Milinda, identified with Menandros, is Milindra in Kṣemendra's Avadana-Kalpalata No. 57, vs. 15. Not unlikely Minara in Tāranātha, p. 23, is another form of the same name.

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⁶ Ed. by TRENCKNER (1880); transl. by Prof. RHYS DAVIDS in SBE. XXXV (1890).

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⁷ The question has been discussed by Prof. D. RHYS DAVIDS in the preface to his translation. On two Chinese translations of the work see E. SPECHT and S. LÉVI in Trans. 9th Congr. of Or. I, 518-529.

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Writings belonging to the class of compendiums, and containing repetitions of passages from more ancient works with more or less apocryphal additions, are the Anāgatavaṃsa or History of future Buddhas⁸, the Saddhamma-Saṅgaha, and the Mahābodhivamsa, which is a translation of a Sinhalese original⁹. The same applies to the Rasavāhinī, a collection of 103 tales¹⁰, the Dāṭhāvaṃsa¹¹ and the Chakesadhātuvamsa¹². A much used compendium of ecclesiastical acts is titled Kammavācā¹³, whereas the chronicles Dīpavaṃsa, Mahāvamsa and Sāsanavaṃsa deserve a special notice on account of their being so highly important for the ecclesiastical history of Ceylon. Interesting notices on Pāli books and authors are contained in the Gandhavaṃsa¹⁴.

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⁸ Ed. by MINAYEF in JPTS of 1886.

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⁹ See STRONG in his ed. p. VIII, where the question of authorship and date is dealt with.

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¹⁰ The four first tales ed. by SPIEGEL in his Anecdota Palica (1845); others by KONOW in DMG of 1889, p. 297 ff.; the 7th Chapter by PAVOLINI (1894).

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¹¹ Ed. by RHYS DAVIDS in JPTS of 1884; by M. C. SWAMY (Lond. 1874).

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¹² Ed. by MINAYEF in JPTS of 1885.

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¹³ See CHILDERS s. v.

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¹⁴ Ed. by MINAYEF in JPTS of 1886. Cp. the same, Recherches I. 257.

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Among the poems in the praise of Buddha we have the Pajjamadhu¹⁵. Another religious poem of didactic character is the Saddhammopāyana¹⁶.

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¹⁵ Ed. by GOONERATNE in JPTS of 1887.

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¹⁶ Ed. by MORRIS in JPTS of 1887.

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Works bearing on philological inquiry, grammars, dictionaries and grammatical papers, are here passed in silence¹.

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¹ A good bibliographical list, up to 1883, is found in FRANKFURTER'S Handbook XX, XXI. For a short description of some valuable works in Simhalese, see HARDY, M. of B. p. 518. Several Pali commentaries, treatises etc. are enumerated in Saddh. S. Ch. XI, and in Gandhavamsa.

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The literary activity of the Northern schools of Buddhists was not inferior to that of the Theravādins, but the ancient texts have only survived in translations or have come to us much altered, if they have not wholly perished. The oldest of the surviving commentaries and treatises are posterior to the Council under Kaniṣka, and all that Huen Thsang tells us² concerning commentaries on Vinaya, Sūtra and Abhidharma being composed at that occasion is nothing else but an echo of the universal Buddhist tradition about the legendary first Council. From nearly that period may date the Vibhāṣā, a commentary on the Abhidharma; it is at any rate anterior to the Abhidharma-kośa by Vasubandhu, who flourished in the 6th century of our era and wrote many other exegetical works on Mahāyāna texts³. The Abhidharma-kośa was again commented by more than one author. To Asaṅga is ascribed a Yogaśāstra or Yogācāryabhūmi-śāstra along with other works of a philosophical character⁴. Diṅnāga wrote a work on logic, the Pramāṇa-samuccaya. Similar works of a more or less polemical character are numerous, but as long as we cannot examine the contents their enumeration is of little use, the more so as the absurd legends about their authors must deter us from entering deeper into the subject. Some celebrities and their works we shall have occasion to notice in Part V, hereafter⁵.

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² Voy. vol. p. 172.

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³ WASSILIEF, B. p. 210; 215; 222. Voy. I, p. 115; IL p. 274. Tār. passim. Cp. MAX MÜLLER, India 302; 308 f.

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⁴ Voy. I, 114; 118. It is strange that Huen Thsang fathers upon him also an Abhidharmakośa, perhaps identical with the Abhidharmasamuccaya in Tār. p. 112.

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⁵ Further notices on renowned mediaeval scholastic writers are found in WASSILIEF, B. p. 200-222. For the commentaries in the Tibetan collections, see CSOMA KÖRÖSI, As. Res. XX, p. 400 ff. — Dictionaries and similar works which will be referred to in the course of this Manual need not to be specified here.

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The N. Buddhists have excelled in various kinds of what may be classed as devotional and edifying literature, so that a high rank must be assigned to not a few of their literary productions on account of the tasteful reproduction of subjects derived from the sacred lore or the lives of Saints. Works as the Buddhacarita of Aśvaghoṣa⁶, the Jātaka-mālā of Ārya Sūra, the Avadāna-kalpalatā of Kṣemendra are noble compositions in every respect. The collection of legendary and semi-historical lore, known under the title of Divyāvadāna, though less refined in language and style, is no less attractive. This valuable collection must have been reduced to its present state in a period after Kaniṣka, for the Dināra repeatedly occurs in it as the name of an Indian coin; yet the constituent parts of it are undoubtedly, for a large part, anterior to A. D. 100, abstraction made of the idiom, which may have been modified. The books of legends called Bhadrakalpāvadāna and Avadāna-śataka are only known from extracts and translations⁷.

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⁶ Ed. by COWELL. For the Chinese transl. see BEAL, SBE. vol, XIX. The first Ch. has been edited by S. LÉVI with a French transl. in JA of 1892. Cf. A. BARTH Bull. Rel. de l' Inde of 1894, p. 16 (separ. copy); LEUMANN, Some Notes on Açvaghosha's Buddhacarita in Wien. Zeitsch. VIII, 193.

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⁷ See S. D'OLDENBURG in Zapiski of 1894; and for the latter work see FÉER, Le livre des Cent Légendes in JA of 1879; his transl. in Ann. Mus. Guimet XVIII. A similar collection in Chinese are the "Contes et Apologues Indiens" (1860), from which STANISLAS JULIEN has published a specimen.

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The published specimens of religious poetry bear the stamp of having been productions in the palmy days of mediaeval Sanskrit literature. The *Bodhicaryāvatāra* by Śāntideva, a poem breathing a truly pious spirit, ranks foremost¹. Almost as elegant in form, but wholly wanting in originality and warmth of feeling is the poem *Śiṣyalekha* by the grammarian Candra-Gomin². Hymns to Śākyasiṃha, Avalokiteśvara etc. are known only from Catalogues³ or occasional quotations.

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¹ Ed. by MINAYEF in Zapiski vol. XV, p. 156—225; partial French transl. by L. DE LA VALLÉE POUSSIN in Museon of 1892. Noteworthy as an indication of the influence of contemporary Hinduistic sentiments is such a passage as we read section 2, vs. 8: *parigraham me kurutāgrasattvāḥ, yuṣmāsu dāsatvam upaimi bhaktyā*. Cp. A. BARTH in Bull. Rel. de l'Inde, (p. 20 separ. copy).

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² Ed. by MINAYEF, with a valuable introduction, in Zapiski IV, p. 29—52; Tibetan text added by IWANOWSKI.

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³ E. g. No. 29—32 in the Catal. of COWELL and EGGELING. Cp. BURNOUF, Intr. p. 557. Specimens of prayers also published by MINAYEF Zapiski II, 130, to Avalokiteśvara; 233, to Buddha; the latter ascribed to the king Harṣadeva.

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