Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c7.4

c7.4

Now "it is just the Aṭṭhavagga which happened to be preserved in the fragments"² discovered from E. Turkestan by Stein; and what is more, the outstanding difference between the Pali and the Sanskrit version is the existence of prose narratives prefixed to the verses of the several vargas of the latter.³ And Hoernle comes to the "unavoidable" conclusion "that the Sanskrit text is a translation from some vernacular....original; and that the translator, observing the absence of an introductory narrative, himself supplied that narrative, and pointed out the exact place where he came to the translation of the verses of his original text."⁴ May not the prose of the Chinese translation be similar in character and thus a later, almost commentarial, addition to the verse?