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Barlaam and Josaphat
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/13/21

The strange parallel between Buddhistic ritual, discipline, and costume, and those which especially claim the name of CATHOLIC in the Christian Church, has been often noticed; and though the parallel has never been elaborated as it might be, some of the more salient facts are familiar to most readers. Still many may be unaware that Buddha himself, Siddhárta the son of Súddodhana, has found his way into the Roman martyrology as a Saint of the Church.

In the first edition a mere allusion was made to this singular story, for it had recently been treated by Professor Max Müller, with characteristic learning and grace. (See Contemporary Review for July, 1870, p. 588.) But the matter is so curious and still so little familiar that I now venture to give it at some length.

The religious romance called the History of BARLAAM and JOSAPHAT was for several centuries one of the most popular works in Christendom. It was translated into all the chief European languages, including Scandinavian and Sclavonic tongues. An Icelandic version dates from the year 1204; one in the Tagal language of the Philippines was printed at Manilla in 1712.[2] The episodes and apologues with which the story abounds have furnished materials to poets and story-tellers in various ages and of very diverse characters; e.g. to Giovanni Boccaccio, John Gower, and to the compiler of the Gesta Romanorum, to Shakspere, and to the late W. Adams, author of the Kings Messengers. The basis of this romance is the story of Siddhárta.

The story of Barlaam and Josaphat first appears among the works (in Greek) of St. John of Damascus, a theologian of the early part of the 8th century, who, before he devoted himself to divinity had held high office at the Court of the Khalif Abu Jáfar Almansúr. The outline of the story is as follows:—

St. Thomas had converted the people of India to the truth; and after the eremitic life originated in Egypt many in India adopted it. But a potent pagan King arose, by name ABENNER, who persecuted the Christians and especially the ascetics. After this King had long been childless, a son, greatly desired, is born to him, a boy of matchless beauty. The King greatly rejoices, gives the child the name of JOSAPHAT, and summons the astrologers to predict his destiny. They foretell for the prince glory and prosperity beyond all his predecessors in the kingdom. One sage, most learned of all, assents to this, but declares that the scene of these glories will not be the paternal realm, and that the child will adopt the faith that his father persecutes.

This prediction greatly troubled King Abenner. In a secluded city he caused a splendid palace to be erected, within which his son was to abide, attended only by tutors and servants in the flower of youth and health. No one from without was to have access to the prince; and he was to witness none of the afflictions of humanity, poverty, disease, old age, or death, but only what was pleasant, so that he should have no inducement to think of the future life; nor was he ever to hear a word of CHRIST or His religion. And, hearing that some monks still survived in India, the King in his wrath ordered that any such, who should be found after three days, should be burnt alive.

The Prince grows up in seclusion, acquires all manner of learning, and exhibits singular endowments of wisdom and acuteness. At last he urges his father to allow him to pass the limits of the palace, and this the King reluctantly permits, after taking all precautions to arrange diverting spectacles, and to keep all painful objects at a distance. Or let us proceed in the Old English of the Golden Legend.[3] "Whan his fader herde this he was full of sorowe, and anone he let do make redy horses and joyfull felawshyp to accompany him, in suche wyse that nothynge dyshonest sholde happen to hym. And on a tyme thus as the Kynges sone wente he mette a mesell and a blynde man, and whã he sawe them he was abasshed and enquyred what them eyled. And his seruautes sayd: These ben passions that comen to men. And he demaunded yf the passyons came to all men. And they sayd nay. Thã sayd he, ben they knowen whiche men shall suffre…. And they answered, Who is he that may knowe ye aduentures of men. And he began to be moche anguysshous for ye incustomable thynge hereof. And another tyme he found a man moche aged, whiche had his chere frouced, his tethe fallen, and he was all croked for age…. And thã he demaunded what sholde be ye ende. And they sayd deth…. And this yonge man remembered ofte in his herte these thynges, and was in grete dyscõforte, but he shewed hy moche glad tofore his fader, and he desyred moche to be enformed and taught in these thyges." [Fol. ccc. lii.]

At this time BARLAAM, a monk of great sanctity and knowledge in divine things, who dwelt in the wilderness of Sennaritis, having received a divine warning, travels to India in the disguise of a merchant, and gains access to Prince Josaphat, to whom he unfolds the Christian doctrine and the blessedness of the monastic life. Suspicion is raised against Barlaam, and he departs. But all efforts to shake the Prince's convictions are vain. As a last resource the King sends for a magician called Theudas, who removes the Prince's attendants and substitutes seductive girls, but all their blandishments are resisted through prayer. The King abandons these attempts and associates his son with himself in the government. The Prince uses his power to promote religion, and everything prospers in his hand. Finally King Abenner is drawn to the truth, and after some years of penitence dies. Josaphat then surrenders the kingdom to a friend called Barachias, and proceeds into the wilderness, where he wanders for two years seeking Barlaam, and much buffeted by the demons. "And whan Balaam had accomplysshed his dayes, he rested in peas about ye yere of Our Lorde. cccc. &. Ixxx. Josaphat lefte his realme the xxv. yere of his age, and ledde the lyfe of an heremyte xxxv. yere, and than rested in peas full of vertues, and was buryed by the body of Balaam." [Fol. ccc. lvi.] The King Barachias afterwards arrives and transfers the bodies solemnly to India.

This is but the skeleton of the story, but the episodes and apologues which round its dimensions, and give it its mediaeval popularity, do not concern our subject. In this skeleton the story of Siddhárta, mutatis mutandis is obvious.

The story was first popular in the Greek Church, and was embodied in the lives of the saints, as recooked by Simeon the Metaphrast, an author whose period is disputed, but was in any case not later than 1150. A Cretan monk called Agapios made selections from the work of Simeon which were published in Romaic at Venice in 1541 under the name of the Paradise, and in which the first section consists of the story of Barlaam and Josaphat. This has been frequently reprinted as a popular book of devotion. A copy before me is printed at Venice in 1865.[4]

From the Greek Church the history of the two saints passed to the Latin, and they found a place in the Roman martyrology under the 27th November. When this first happened I have not been able to ascertain. Their history occupies a large space in the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, written in the 13th century, and is set forth, as we have seen, in the Golden Legend of nearly the same age. They are recognised by Baronius, and are to be found at p. 348 of "The Roman Martyrology set forth by command of Pope Gregory XIII., and revised by the authority of Pope Urban VIII., translated out of Latin into English by G.K. of the Society of Jesus…. and now re-edited … by W.N. Skelly, Esq. London, T. Richardson & Son." (Printed at Derby, 1847.) Here in Palermo is a church bearing the dedication Divo Iosaphat.

Professor Müller attributes the first recognition of the identity of the two stories to M. Laboulaye in 1859. But in fact I find that the historian de Couto had made the discovery long before.[5] He says, speaking of Budão (Buddha), and after relating his history:

"To this name the Gentiles throughout all India have dedicated great and superb pagodas. With reference to this story we have been diligent in enquiring if the ancient Gentiles of those parts had in their writings any knowledge of St. Josaphat who was converted by Barlam, who in his Legend is represented as the son of a great King of India, and who had just the same up-bringing, with all the same particulars, that we have recounted of the life of the Budão…. And as a thing seems much to the purpose, which was told us by a very old man of the Salsette territory in Baçaim, about Josaphat, I think it well to cite it: As I was travelling in the Isle of Salsette, and went to see that rare and admirable Pagoda (which we call the Canará Pagoda[6]) made in a mountain, with many halls cut out of one solid rock … and enquiring from this old man about the work, and what he thought as to who had made it, he told us that without doubt the work was made by order of the father of St. Josaphat to bring him up therein in seclusion, as the story tells. And as it informs us that he was the son of a great King in India, it may well be, as we have just said, that he was the Budão, of whom they relate such marvels." (Dec. V. liv. vi. cap. 2.)

Dominie Valentyn, not being well read in the Golden Legend, remarks on the subject of Buddha: "There be some who hold this Budhum for a fugitive Syrian Jew, or for an Israelite, others who hold him for a Disciple of the Apostle Thomas; but how in that case he could have been born 622 years before Christ I leave them to explain. Diego de Couto stands by the belief that he was certainly Joshua, which is still more absurd!" (V. deel, p. 374.)

[Since the days of Couto, who considered the Buddhist legend but an imitation of the Christian legend, the identity of the stories was recognised (as mentioned supra) by M. Edouard Laboulaye, in the Journal des Débats of the 26th of July, 1859. About the same time, Professor F. Liebrecht of Liége, in Ebert's Jahrbuch für Romanische und Englische Literatur, II. p. 314 seqq., comparing the Book of Barlaam and Joasaph with the work of Barthélemy St. Hilaire on Buddha, arrived at the same conclusion.

In 1880, Professor T.W. Rhys Davids has devoted some pages (xxxvi.-xli.) in his Buddhist Birth Stories; or, Jataka Tales, to The Barlaam and Josaphat Literature, and we note from them that: "Pope Sixtus the Fifth (1585-1590) authorised a particular Martyrologium, drawn up by Cardinal Baronius, to be used throughout the Western Church.". In that work are included not only the saints first canonised at Rome, but all those who, having been already canonised elsewhere, were then acknowledged by the Pope and the College of Rites to be saints of the Catholic Church of Christ. Among such, under the date of the 27th of November, are included "The holy Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, of India, on the borders of Persia, whose wonderful acts Saint John of Damascus has described. Where and when they were first canonised, I have been unable, in spite of much investigation, to ascertain. Petrus de Natalibus, who was Bishop of Equilium, the modern Jesolo, near Venice, from 1370 to 1400, wrote a Martyrology called Catalogus Sanctorum; and in it, among the 'Saints,' he inserts both Barlaam and Josaphat, giving also a short account of them derived from the old Latin translation of St. John of Damascus. It is from this work that Baronius, the compiler of the authorised Martyrology now in use, took over the names of these two saints, Barlaam and Josaphat. But, so far as I have been able to ascertain, they do not occur in any martyrologies or lists of saints of the Western Church older than that of Petrus de Natalibus. In the corresponding manual of worship still used in the Greek Church, however, we find, under 26th August, the name 'of the holy Iosaph, son of Abener, King of India.' Barlaam is not mentioned, and is not therefore recognised as a saint in the Greek Church. No history is added to the simple statement I have quoted; and I do not know on what authority it rests. But there is no doubt that it is in the East, and probably among the records of the ancient church of Syria, that a final solution of this question should be sought. Some of the more learned of the numerous writers who translated or composed new works on the basis of the story of Josaphat, have pointed out in their notes that he had been canonised; and the hero of the romance is usually called St. Josaphat in the titles of these works, as will be seen from the Table of the Josaphat literature below. But Professor Liebrecht, when identifying Josaphat with the Buddha, took no notice of this; and it was Professor Max Müller, who has done so much to infuse the glow of life into the dry bones of Oriental scholarship, who first pointed out the strange fact—almost incredible, were it not for the completeness of the proof—that Gotama the Buddha, under the name of St. Josaphat, is now officially recognised and honoured and worshipped throughout the whole of Catholic Christendom as a Christian saint!" Professor T.W. Rhys Davids gives further a Bibliography, pp. xcv.-xcvii.

M.H. Zotenberg wrote a learned memoir (N. et Ext. XXVIII. Pt. I.) in 1886 to prove that the Greek Text is not a translation but the original of the Legend. There are many MSS. of the Greek Text of the Book of Barlaam and Joasaph in Paris, Vienna, Munich, etc., including ten MSS. kept in various libraries at Oxford. New researches made by Professor E. Kuhn, of Munich (Barlaam und Joasaph. Eine Bibliographisch-literargeschichtliche Studie, 1893), seem to prove that during the 6th century, in that part of the Sassanian Empire bordering on India, in fact Afghanistan, Buddhism and Christianity were gaining ground at the expense of the Zoroastrian faith, and that some Buddhist wrote in Pehlevi a Book of Yûdâsaf (Bodhisatva); a Christian, finding pleasant the legend, made an adaptation of it from his own point of view, introducing the character of the monk Balauhar (Barlaam) to teach his religion to Yûdâsaf, who could not, in his Christian disguise, arrive at the truth by himself like a Bodhisatva. This Pehlevi version of the newly-formed Christian legend was translated into Syriac, and from Syriac was drawn a Georgian version, and, in the first half of the 7th century, the Greek Text of John, a monk of the convent of St. Saba, near Jerusalem, by some turned into St. John of Damascus, who added to the story some long theological discussions. From this Greek, it was translated into all the known languages of Europe, while the Pehlevi version being rendered into Arabic, was adapted by the Mussulmans and the Jews to their own creeds. (H. Zotenberg, Mém. sur le texte et les versions orientales du Livre de Barlaam et Joasaph, Not. et Ext. XXVIII. Pt. I. pp. 1-166; G. Paris, Saint Josaphat in Rev. de Paris, 1'er Juin, 1895, and Poèmes et Légendes du Moyen Age, pp. 181-214.)

Mr. Joseph Jacobs published in London, 1896, a valuable little book, Barlaam and Josaphat, English Lives of Buddha, in which he comes to this conclusion (p. xli.): "I regard the literary history of the Barlaam literature as completely parallel with that of the Fables of Bidpai. Originally Buddhistic books, both lost their specifically Buddhistic traits before they left India, and made their appeal, by their parables, more than by their doctrines. Both were translated into Pehlevi in the reign of Chosroes, and from that watershed floated off into the literatures of all the great creeds. In Christianity alone, characteristically enough, one of them, the Barlaam book, was surcharged with dogma, and turned to polemical uses, with the curious result that Buddha became one of the champions of the Church. To divest the Barlaam-Buddha of this character, and see him in his original form, we must take a further journey and seek him in his home beyond the Himalayas."

[Illustration: Sakya Muni as a Saint of the Roman Martyrology. "Wie des Kunigs Son in dem aufscziechen am ersten sahe in dem Weg eynen blinden und eyn aufsmörckigen und eyen alten krummen Man."[7]]

Professor Gaston Paris, in answer to Mr. Jacobs, writes (Poèmes et Lég. du Moyen Age, p. 213): "Mr. Jacobs thinks that the Book of Balauhar and Yûdâsaf was not originally Christian, and could have existed such as it is now in Buddhistic India, but it is hardly likely, as Buddha did not require the help of a teacher to find truth, and his followers would not have invented the person of Balauhar-Barlaam; on the other hand, the introduction of the Evangelical Parable of The Sower, which exists in the original of all the versions of our Book, shows that this original was a Christian adaptation of the Legend of Buddha. Mr. Jacobs seeks vainly to lessen the force of this proof in showing that this Parable has parallels in Buddhistic literature."—H.C.]

-- The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition

A Christian depiction of Josaphat, 12th century manuscript

Barlaam and Josaphat are legendary Christian martyrs and saints. Their life story is very likely to have been based on the life of the Gautama Buddha.[1] It tells how an Indian king persecuted the Christian Church in his realm. When astrologers predicted that his own son would some day become a Christian, the king imprisoned the young prince Josaphat, who nevertheless met the hermit Saint Barlaam and converted to Christianity. After much tribulation the young prince's father accepted the Christian faith, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit. Josaphat himself later abdicated and went into seclusion with his old teacher Barlaam.[2] The tale derives from a second to fourth century Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist text, via a Manichaean version,[3] then the Arabic Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būd̠āsaf (Book of Bilawhar and Budhasaf), current in Baghdad in the eighth century, from where it entered into Middle Eastern Christian circles before appearing in European versions. The two were entered in the Eastern Orthodox calendar with a feast-day on 26 August,[4] and in the Roman Martyrology in the Western Church as "Barlaam and Josaphat" on the date of 27 November.[5]

Background: the Buddha


Depiction of a parable from Barlaam and Josaphat at the Baptistery of Parma, Italy

The story of Barlaam and Josaphat or Joasaph is a Christianized and later version of the story of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha.[6] In the Middle Ages the two were treated as Christian saints, being entered in the Greek Orthodox calendar on 26 August,[4] and in the Roman Martyrology in the Western Church as "Barlaam and Josaphat" on the date of 27 November.[5] In the Slavic tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, these two are commemorated on 19 November (corresponding to 2 December on the Gregorian calendar).[7][8]

The first Christianized adaptation was the Georgian epic Balavariani dating back to the 10th century. A Georgian monk, Euthymius of Athos, translated the story into Greek, some time before he died in an accident while visiting Constantinople in 1028.[9] There the Greek adaptation was translated into Latin in 1048 and soon became well known in Western Europe as Barlaam and Josaphat.[10] The Greek legend of "Barlaam and Ioasaph" is sometimes attributed to the 7th century John of Damascus, but Conybeare argued it was transcribed by the Georgian monk Euthymius in the 11th century.[11]

The story of Barlaam and Josaphat was popular in the Middle Ages, appearing in such works as the Golden Legend, and a scene there involving three caskets eventually appeared, via Caxton's English translation of a Latin version, in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice".[12] The poet Chardri produced an Anglo-Norman version, La vie de seint Josaphaz, in the 13th century.

Two Middle High German versions were produced: one, the "Laubacher Barlaam", by Bishop Otto II of Freising and another, Barlaam und Josaphat, a romance in verse, by Rudolf von Ems. The latter was described as "perhaps the flower of religious literary creativity in the German Middle Ages" by Heinrich Heine.[13]

The story of Josaphat was re-told as an exploration of free will[14] and the seeking of inner peace through meditation in the 17th century.[citation needed]

The legend

According to the legend, King Abenner or Avenier in India persecuted the Christian Church in his realm, founded by the Apostle Thomas. When astrologers predicted that his own son would some day become a Christian, Abenner had the young prince Josaphat isolated from external contact. Despite the imprisonment, Josaphat met the hermit Saint Barlaam and converted to Christianity. Josaphat kept his faith even in the face of his father's anger and persuasion. Eventually Abenner converted, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit. Josaphat himself later abdicated and went into seclusion with his old teacher Barlaam.[2]

Name

Ioasaph (Georgian Iodasaph, Arabic Yūdhasaf or Būdhasaf) is derived from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva.[5][6][15] The Sanskrit word was changed to Bodisav in Persian texts in the 6th or 7th century, then to Budhasaf or Yudasaf in an 8th-century Arabic document (possibly Arabic initial "b" ﺑ changed to "y" ﻳ by duplication of a dot in handwriting).[16] This became Iodasaph in Georgia in the 10th century, and that name was adapted as Ioasaph in Greece in the 11th century, and then was assimilated to Iosaphat/Josaphat in Latin.[17]

Feast day

Although Barlaam and Josaphat were never formally canonized, they were included in earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology (feast day 27 November)[18][19] — though not in the Roman Missal — and in the Eastern Orthodox Church liturgical calendar (26 August in Greek tradition etc.[4] / 19 November in Russian tradition).[7][8]

Texts


A page from the 1896 edition by Joseph Jacobs at the University of Toronto (Click on image to read the book)

There are a large number of different books in various languages, all dealing with the lives of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat in India. In this hagiographic tradition, the life and teachings of Josaphat have many parallels with those of the Buddha. "But not till the mid-nineteenth century was it recognised that, in Josaphat, the Buddha had been venerated as a Christian saint for about a thousand years."[20] The authorship of the work is disputed. The origins of the story seem to be a Central Asian manuscript written in the Manichaean tradition. This book was translated into Georgian and Arabic.

Greek manuscripts

The best-known version in Europe comes from a separate, but not wholly independent, source, written in Greek, and, although anonymous, attributed to a monk named John. It was only considerably later that the tradition arose that this was John of Damascus, but most scholars no longer accept this attribution. Instead much evidence points to Euthymius of Athos, a Georgian who died in 1028.[21]

The modern edition of the Greek text, from the 160 surviving variant manuscripts (2006), with introduction (German, 2009) is published as Volume 6 of the works of John the Damascene by the monks of the Abbey of Scheyern, edited by Robert Volk. It was included in the edition due to the traditional ascription, but marked "spuria" as the translator is the Georgian monk Euthymius the Hagiorite (ca. 955–1028) at Mount Athos and not John the Damascene of the monastery of Saint Sabas in the Judaean Desert. The 2009 introduction includes an overview.[22]

English manuscripts

Among the manuscripts in English, two of the most important are the British Museum MS Egerton 876 (the basis for Ikegami's book) and MS Peterhouse 257 (the basis for Hirsh's book) at the University of Cambridge. The book contains a tale similar to The Three Caskets found in the Gesta Romanorum and later in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.[21]

Editions

Arabic

• E. Rehatsek – The Book of the King's Son and the Ascetic – English translation (1888) based on the Halle Arabic manuscript
• Gimaret – Le livre de Bilawhar et Budasaf – French translation of Bombay Arabic manuscript

Georgian

• David Marshall Lang: The Balavariani: A Tale from the Christian East California University Press: Los Angeles, 1966. Translation of the long version Georgian work that probably served as a basis for the Greek text. Jerusalem MS140
• David Marshall Lang: Wisdom of Balahvar – the short Georgian version Jerusalem MS36, 1960
• The Balavariani (Georgian and Arabic ბალავარიანი, بلوریانی)

Greek


First page of the Barlam and Josephat manuscript at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, 14th or 15th century

• Robert Volk, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos VI/1: Historia animae utilis de Barlaam et Ioasaph (spuria). Patristische Texte und Studien Bd. 61. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Pp. xlii, 596. ISBN 978-3-11-019462-3.
• Robert Volk, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos VI/2: Historia animae utilis de Barlaam et Ioasaph (spuria). Text und zehn Appendices. Patristische Texte und Studien Bd. 60. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Pp. xiv, 512. ISBN 978-3-11-018134-0.
• Boissonade – older edition of the Greek
• G.R. Woodward and H. Mattingly – older English translation of the Greek Online Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1914
• S. Ioannis Damasceni Historia, de vitis et rebvs gestis SS. Barlaam Eremitae, & Iosaphat Indiæ regis. Iacobo Billio Prunæo, S. Michaëlis in eremo Cœnobiarcha interprete. Coloniae, In Officina Birckmannica, sumptibus Arnoldi Mylij. Anno M. D. XCIII. – Modern Latin translation of the Greek.
• Vitæ et res gestæ SS. Barlaam eremitæ, et Iosaphat Indiæ regis. S. Io. Damasceno avctores, Iac. Billio Prunæo interprete. Antverpiæ, Sumptibus Viduæ & hæredum Ioannis Belleri. 1602. – Modern Latin translation of the Greek.
• S. Ioannis Damasceni Historia, de vitis et rebvs gestis SS. Barlaam Eremitæ, & Iosaphat Indiæ regis. Iacobo Billio Prvnæo, S. Michaëlis in eremo Cœnobiarcha, interprete. Nune denuò accuratissimè à P. Societate Iesv revisa & correcta. Coloniæ Agrippinæ, Apud Iodocvm Kalcoven, M. DC. XLIII. – Modern Latin translation of the Greek.

Latin

• Codex VIII B10, Naples

Ethiopic

• Baralâm and Yĕwâsĕf. Budge, E.A. Wallis. Baralam and Yewasef : the Ethiopic version of a Christianized recension of the Buddhist legend of the Buddha and the Bodhisattva. Published: London; New York: Kegan Paul; Biggleswade, UK: Distributed by Extenza-Turpin Distribution; New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 2004.

Old French

• Jean Sonet, Le roman de Barlaam et Josaphat (Namur, 1949–52) after Tours MS949
• Leonard Mills, after Vatican MS660
• Zotenberg and Meyer, after Gui de Cambrai MS1153

Catalan

• Gerhard Moldenhauer Vida de Barlan MS174

Provencal

• Ferdinand Heuckenkamp, version in langue d'Oc
• Jeanroy, Provençal version, after Heuckenkamp
• Nelli, Troubadours, after Heuckenkamp
• Occitan, BN1049

Italian

• G.B. Bottari, edition of various old Italian MS.
• Georg Maas, old Italian MS3383

Portuguese

• Hilário da Lourinhã. Vida do honorado Infante Josaphate, filho del Rey Avenir, versão de frei Hilário da Lourinhã: e a identificação, por Diogo do Couto (1542–1616), de Josaphate com o Buda. Introduction and notes by Margarida Corrêa de Lacerda. Lisboa: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1963.

Serbian

• "Barlaam and Josaphat" in the Eastern Orthodox version comes from John of Damascus, copied and translated into Old Church Slavonic by anonymous monk-scribes from the 9th-11th centuries, and in modern Serbian by Ava Justin Popović ("Lives of the Saints" for November, pp. 563-590), an abridged version of which is given in the Ohrid Prologue of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović.

English

• Hirsh, John C. (editor). Barlam and Iosaphat: a Middle English life of Buddha. Edited from MS Peterhouse 257. London; New York: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-19-722292-7
• Ikegami, Keiko. Barlaam and Josaphat : a transcription of MS Egerton 876 with notes, glossary, and comparative study of the Middle English and Japanese versions, New York: AMS Press, 1999. ISBN 0-404-64161-X
• John Damascene, Barlaam and Ioasaph (Loeb Classical Library). David M. Lang (introduction), G. R. Woodward (translator), Harold Mattingly (translator)• Publisher: Loeb Classical Library, W. Heinemann; 1967, 1914. ISBN 0-674-99038-2
• MacDonald, K.S. (editor). The story of Barlaam and Joasaph : Buddhism & Christianity. With philological introduction and notes to the Vernon, Harleian and Bodleian versions, by John Morrison. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, 1895.

Old Norse

Further information: Barlaams saga ok Jósafats

• Magnus Rindal (editor). Barlaams ok Josaphats saga. Oslo: Published for Kjeldeskriftfondet by Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-insitutt, 1981. ISBN 82-7061-275-8
• Keyser, R.; Unger, C. R. (1851). Barlaams ok Josaphats saga: En religiös romantisk fortælling om Barlaam og Josaphat. Christiania.

Tibetan

• Rgya Tch'er Rol Pa – ou: Développement des jeux, Philippe Édouard Foucaux (1811–1894) 1847. Lalitavistara

Hebrew

• Avraham ben Shmuel ha-Levi Ibn Hasdai, Ben hammelekh vehannazir (13th century)
• Habermann, Avraham Meir (ed.), Avraham ben Hasdai, Ben hammelekh vehannazir, Jerusalem: Mahberot lesifrut – Mossad haRav Kook 1950 (in Hebrew).
• Abraham ben Shemuel Halevi ibn Hasdai, Ben hamelekh vehanazir, Ed. by Ayelet Oettinger, Universitat Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv 2011 (in Hebrew).

See also

• Gautama Buddha in world religions
• Thomas the Apostle
• Buddhism and Christianity
• Josaphat (disambiguation)
• Barlaams saga ok Jósafats
• Greco-Buddhism
• Life is a Dream, Spanish play incorporating the theme of the imprisoned prince

Notes and references

1. John Walbridge The Wisdom of the Mystic East: Suhrawardī and Platonic Orientalism Page 129 – 2001 "The form Būdhīsaf is the original, as shown by Sogdian form Pwtysfi and the early New Persian form Bwdysf. ... On the Christian versions see A. S. Geden, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, s.v. "Josaphat, Barlaam and," and M. P. Alfaric, ..."
2. The Golden Legend: The Story of Barlaam and Josaphat Archived 16 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine
3. Wilson, Joseph (2009). "The Life of the Saint and the Animal: Asian Religious Influence in the Medieval Christian West". The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. 3 (2): 169–194. doi:10.1558/jsrnc.v3i2.169. Retrieved 30 July 2020.
4. Great Synaxaristes (in Greek): Ὁ Ὅσιος Ἰωάσαφ γιὸς τοῦ βασιλιὰ τῆς Ἰνδίας Ἄβενιρ. 26 Αυγούστου. ΜΕΓΑΣ ΣΥΝΑΞΑΡΙΣΤΗΣ.
5. Macdonnel, Arthur Anthony (1900). " Sanskrit Literature and the West.". A History of Sanskrit Literature. New York: D. Appleton and Co. p. 420.
6. Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Barlaam and Josaphat" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
7. November 19/December 2 Archived 1 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Orthodox Calendar (Pravoslavie.ru).
8. Venerable Joasaph the Prince of India. OCA – Feasts and Saints.
9. "St. Euthymius of Athos the translator", Orthodox Church in America
10. William Cantwell Smith, "Towards a World Theology" (1981)
11. F.C. Conybeare, "The Barlaam and Josaphat Legend in the Ancient Georgian and Armenian Literatures" (Gorgias Press)
12. Sangharakshita, "From Genesis to the Diamond Sutra – A Western Buddhist's Encounters with Christianity" (Windhorse Publications, 2005), p.165
13. Die Blüte der heiligen Dichtkunst im deutschen Mittelalter ist vielleicht »Barlaam und Josaphat«... See Heinrich Heine, Die romantische Schule (Erstes Buch) at heinrich-heine.net. (in German).
14. Cañizares Ferriz, Patricia (1 January 2000). "La Historia de los dos soldados de Cristo, Barlaan y Josafat, traducida por Juan de Arce Solorzeno (Madrid 1608)" (PDF). Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Latinos (in Spanish). 19: 260. ISSN 1988-2343. Retrieved 21 February 2021. y que ya en el s. XVI se convirtiera en un arma defensora de la validez de la vida monástica y del libre albedrío frente a la doctrina luterana. [and that, already in the 16th century, it would become a weapon defending the validity of monastic life and free will} against Lutheran doctrine.]
15. Kevin Trainor (ed), "Buddhism" (Duncan Baird Publishers, 2001), p. 24
16. Emmanuel Choisnel Les Parthes et la Route de la soie 2004 Page 202 "Le nom de Josaphat dérive, tout comme son associé Barlaam dans la légende, du mot Bodhisattva. Le terme Bodhisattva passa d'abord en pehlevi, puis en arabe, où il devint Budasaf. Étant donné qu'en arabe le "b" et le "y" ne different que ..."
17. D.M. Lang, The Life of the Blessed Iodasaph: A New Oriental Christian Version of the Barlaam and Ioasaph Romance (Jerusalem, Greek Patriarchal Library: Georgian MS 140), BSOAS 20.1/3 (1957):
18. Martyrologium Romanum 27 Novembris Apud Indos, Persis finitimos, sanctorum Barlaam et Josaphat, quorum actus mirandos sanctus Joannes Damascenus conscripsit.
19. Emmanuel Choisnel Les Parthes et la Route de la soie 2004 – Page 202 "Dans l'Église grecque orthodoxe, Saint Josaphat a été fêté le 26 août et, dans l'Église romaine, le 27 novembre a été la ... D. M. Lang, auteur du chapitre « Iran, Armenia and Georgia » dans la Cambridge History of Iran, estime pour sa part ..."
20. Barlaam and Ioasaph, John Damascene, Loeb Classical Library 34, Introduction by David M. Lang
21. Barlaam and Ioasaph, John Damascene, Loeb Classical Library 34, at LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY
22. Pieter W. van der Horst, Utrecht – Review of 2006/2009 Robert Volk edition

External links

• Asmussen, J. P. (1988). "BARLAAM AND IOSAPH". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. III, Fasc. 8. p. 801.
• Barlaam and Ioasaph (Legend in form attributed to St John of Damascus)
• "Barlaam and Josaphat" . Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913.
• Barlaam and Josaphat in Jewish Encyclopedia
• Barlaam et Josaphat. Augsburg, Günther Zainer, ca. 1476. From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress
• "Barlaam and Josaphat" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.

[admin]

Mahavamsa [Ceylonese Buddhist chronicles]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/13/21

The identification of Raja Priyadarsin with Raja Asoka was based entirely upon Ceylonese Buddhist chronicles. Talboys Wheeler wrote in 1874, "The identification of Raja Priyadarsin of the Edicts with Raja Asoka of the Buddhist chronicles was first pointed out by Mr. Turnour who rested it upon a passage in the Dipavamsa. The late Prof. [Horace Hayman] Wilson objected to this identification."1 [History of India, Hindu, Buddhist and Brahmanical, 280.] Prof. Rhys Davids declared, "It is not too much to say that without the help of the Ceylon Books, the striking identification of the King Piyadassi of the edicts with the king Asoka of history would never have been made."2 [Buddhist India, 273.] But the Ceylon chronicles are admitted to be utterly worthless as history, and according to Wheeler, "the Buddhist chronicles might be dismissed as a monkish jumble of myths and names,3 [EHI, 171] and even Vincent Smith in the preface to his Asoka himself said, "I reject absolutely the Ceylonese chronology...... The undeserved credit given to the monks of Ceylon has been a great hindrance to the right understanding of ancient Indian history." And yet it is on such undeserved credit that the identity of Priyadarsin with Asoka Maurya rests to this day.

-- History of Classical Sanskrit Literature, by Kavyavinoda, Sahityaratnakara M. Krishnamachariar, M.A., M.I., Ph.D., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of London (Of the Madras Judicial Service), Assisted by His Son M. Srinivasachariar, B.A., B.L., Advocate, Madras, 1937

Highlights:

The contents of the Mahavamsa can be broadly divided into four categories:[2]

The Buddha's Visits to Sri Lanka: This material recounts three legendary visits by the Buddha to the island of Sri Lanka. These stories describe the Buddha subduing or driving away the Yakkhas (Yakshas) and Nagas that were inhabiting the island and delivering a prophecy that Sri Lanka will become an important Buddhist center. These visits are not mentioned in the Pali Canon or other early sources….

Genealogies and lineages of kings of Sri Lanka... This material may have been derived from earlier royal chronicles and king lists that were recorded orally in vernacular languages…

History of the Buddhist Sangha: This section of the Mahavamsa deals with the mission sent by Emperor Ashoka to Sri Lanka, the transplantation of the bodhi tree, and the founding of the Mahavihara. It includes the names of prominent monks and nuns in the early Sri Lankan sangha. It also includes accounts of the early Buddhist councils and the first recording of the Pali canon in writing….

Chronicles of Sri Lanka…

Authorship of the Mahavamsa is attributed to a monk called Mahānāma by the Mahavamsa-tika. Mahānāma is described as residing in a monastery belonging to general Dighasanda and affiliated with the Mahavihara…

A companion volume, the Culavamsa "Lesser Chronicle", compiled by Sinhala monks, covers the period from the 4th century to the British takeover of Sri Lanka in 1815. The Culavamsa was compiled by a number of authors of different time periods…

The combined work, [is] sometimes referred to collectively as the Mahavamsa…

It is very important in dating the consecration of the Maurya Emperor Ashoka…

The Mahavamsa first came to the attention of Western readers around 1809 CE, when Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of the British colony in Ceylon, sent manuscripts of it and other Sri Lankan chronicles to Europe for publication. Eugène Burnouf produced a Romanized transliteration and translation into Latin in 1826... Working from Johnston's manuscripts, Edward Upham published an English translation in 1833, but it was marked by a number of errors in translation and interpretation, among them suggesting that the Buddha was born in Sri Lanka and built a monastery atop Adam's Peak. The first printed edition and widely read English translation was published in 1837 by George Turnour, an historian and officer of the Ceylon Civil Service…

Historiographical sources are rare in much of South Asia…

The Mahavamsa has, especially in modern Sri Lanka, acquired a significance as a document with a political message. The Sinhalese majority often use Manavamsa as a proof of their claim that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist nation from historical time…

Early Western scholars like Otto Franke dismissed the possibility that the Mahavamsa contained reliable historical content…

Wilhelm Geiger was one of the first Western scholars to suggest that it was possible to separate useful historical information from the mythic and poetic elaborations of the chronicle…. Geiger hypothesized that the Mahavamsa had been based on earlier Sinhala sources that originated on the island of Ceylon. While Geiger did not believe that the details provided with every story and name were reliable, he broke from earlier scholars in believing that the Mahavamsa faithfully reflected an earlier tradition that had preserved the names and deeds of various royal and religious leaders, rather than being a pure work of heroic literary fiction. He regarded the early chapters of the Culavamsa as the most accurate, with the early chapters of the Mahavamsa being too remote historically and the later sections of the Culavamsa marked by excessive elaboration.

Geiger's Sinhala student G. C. Mendis was more openly skeptical about certain portions of the text, specifically citing the story of the Sinhala ancestor Vijaya as being too remote historically from its source and too similar to an epic poem or other literary creation to be seriously regarded as history. The date of Vijaya's arrival is thought to have been artificially fixed to coincide with the date for the death of Gautama Buddha around 543 BCE. The Chinese pilgrims Fa Hsien and Hsuan Tsang both recorded myths of the origins of the Sinhala people in their travels that varied significantly from the versions recorded in the Mahavamsa…

The story of the Buddha's three visits to Sri Lanka are not recorded in any source outside of the Mahavamsa tradition. Moreover, the genealogy of the Buddha recorded in the Mahavamsa describes him as being the product of four cross cousin marriages. Cross-cousin marriage is associated historically with the Dravidian people of southern India -- both Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhala practiced cross-cousin marriage historically -- but exogamous marriage was the norm in the regions of northern India associated with the life of the Buddha. No mention of cross-cousin marriage is found in earlier Buddhist sources…

The historical accuracy of Mahinda converting the Sri Lankan king to Buddhism is also debated. Hermann Oldenberg, a German scholar of Indology who has published studies on the Buddha and translated many Pali texts, considers this story a "pure invention". V. A. Smith (Author of Ashoka and Early history of India) also refers to this story as "a tissue of absurdities". V. A. Smith and Professor Hermann came to this conclusion due to Ashoka not mentioning the handing over of his son, Mahinda, to the temple to become a Buddhist missionary and Mahinda's role in converting the Sri Lankan king to Buddhism, in his 13th year Rock Edicts, particularly Rock-Edict XIII. Sources outside of Sri Lanka and the Mahavamsa tradition do not mention Mahinda as Ashoka's son….

The Mahavamsa is believed to have originated from an earlier chronicle known as the Dipavamsa... The Dipavamsa is much simpler and contains less information than the Mahavamsa and probably served as the nucleus of an oral tradition that was eventually incorporated into the written Mahavamsa.

Regarding the Vijaya legend, Dipavamsa has tried to be less super-natural than the later work, Mahavamsa in referring to the husband of the Kalinga-Vanga princess, ancestor of Vijya, as a man named Sinha who was an outlaw that attacked caravans en route. In the meantime, Sinha-bahu and Sinhasivali, as king and queen of the kingdom of Lala (Lata), "gave birth to twin sons, sixteen times." The eldest was Vijaya and the second was Sumitta. As Vijaya was of cruel and unseemly conduct, the enraged people requested the king to kill his son. But the king caused him and his seven hundred followers to leave the kingdom, and they landed in Sri Lanka, at a place called Tamba-panni, on the exact day when the Buddha passed into Maha Parinibbana.

-- Dipavamsa, by Wikipedia

The Dipavamsa is believed to have been the first Pali text composed entirely in Ceylon.

A subsequent work sometimes known as Culavamsa extends the Mahavamsa to cover the period from the reign of Mahasena of Anuradhapura (277–304 CE) until 1815, when the entire island was surrendered to the British throne. The Culavamsa contains three sections composed by five different authors (one anonymous) belonging to successive historical periods….

A commentary on the Mahavamsa, known as the Mahavamsa-tika, is believed to have been composed before the first additions composing the Culavamsa were written… This commentary provides explanations of ambiguous Pali terms used in the Mahavamsa, and in some cases adds additional details or clarifies differences between different versions of the Mahavamsa…

-- Mahavamsa, by Wikipedia

The identification of Raja Priyadarsin with Raja Asoka was based entirely upon Ceylonese Buddhist chronicles. Talboys Wheeler wrote in 1874, "The identification of Raja Priyadarsin of the Edicts with Raja Asoka of the Buddhist chronicles was first pointed out by Mr. Turnour who rested it upon a passage in the Dipavamsa. The late Prof. [Horace Hayman] Wilson objected to this identification."1 [History of India, Hindu, Buddhist and Brahmanical, 280.] Prof. Rhys Davids declared, "It is not too much to say that without the help of the Ceylon Books, the striking identification of the King Piyadassi of the edicts with the king Asoka of history would never have been made."2 [Buddhist India, 273.] But the Ceylon chronicles are admitted to be utterly worthless as history, and according to Wheeler, "the Buddhist chronicles might be dismissed as a monkish jumble of myths and names,3 [EHI, 171] and even Vincent Smith in the preface to his Asoka himself said, "I reject absolutely the Ceylonese chronology...... The undeserved credit given to the monks of Ceylon has been a great hindrance to the right understanding of ancient Indian history." And yet it is on such undeserved credit that the identity of Priyadarsin with Asoka Maurya rests to this day.

-- History of Classical Sanskrit Literature, by Kavyavinoda, Sahityaratnakara M. Krishnamachariar, M.A., M.I., Ph.D., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of London (Of the Madras Judicial Service), Assisted by His Son M. Srinivasachariar, B.A., B.L., Advocate, Madras, 1937

Mahāvaṃsa
Type: Post-canonical text; Chronicle
Composition: 5th Century CE
Attribution: Mahānāma
Commentary: Mahavamsa-tika
PTS Abbreviation: Bv
Pāli literature

The Mahavamsa ("Great Chronicle", Pali Mahāvaṃsa) (5th century CE) is the meticulously kept historical chronicle of Sri Lanka written in the style of an epic poem written in the Pali language.[1] It relates the history of Sri Lanka from its legendary beginnings up to the reign of Mahasena of Anuradhapura (A.D. 302) covering the period between the arrival of Prince Vijaya from India in 543 BCE to his reign (277–304 CE) and later updated by different writers. It was composed by a Buddhist monk at the Mahavihara temple in Anuradhapura about the fifth century A.D.

Prince Vijaya (Sinhala: විජය කුමරු) was the traditional first Sinhalese king of Sri Lanka, mentioned in the Pali chronicles, including Mahavamsa. According to these chronicles, he is the first recorded King of Sri Lanka. His reign is traditionally dated to 543–505 BCE. According to the legends, he and several hundred of his followers came to Lanka after being expelled from an Indian kingdom. According to Mahavamsa, in Lanka, they defeated a Yakkha colony near to "Thammena" (Thambapanni) and displaced the island's original inhabitants (Yakkhas), from their city of "Sirisavatthu" with the support of princess Kuveni and established a kingdom and became ancestors of the modern Sinhalese people.

-- Prince Vijaya, by Wikipedia

Contents

The contents of the Mahavamsa can be broadly divided into four categories:[2]

• The Buddha's Visits to Sri Lanka: This material recounts three legendary visits by the Buddha to the island of Sri Lanka. These stories describe the Buddha subduing or driving away the Yakkhas (Yakshas) and Nagas that were inhabiting the island and delivering a prophecy that Sri Lanka will become an important Buddhist center. These visits are not mentioned in the Pali Canon or other early sources.
• Chronicles of Kings of Sri Lanka: This material consists of genealogies and lineages of kings of Sri Lanka, sometimes with stories about their succession or notable incidents in their reigns. This material may have been derived from earlier royal chronicles and king lists that were recorded orally in vernacular languages, and are a significant source of material about the history of Sri Lanka and nearby Indian kingdoms.
• History of the Buddhist Sangha: This section of the Mahavamsa deals with the mission sent by Emperor Ashoka to Sri Lanka, the transplantation of the bodhi tree, and the founding of the Mahavihara. It includes the names of prominent monks and nuns in the early Sri Lankan sangha. It also includes accounts of the early Buddhist councils and the first recording of the Pali canon in writing. This is a significant source of material about the development of the early Buddhist community, and includes the names of missionaries dispatched to various regions of South and Southeast Asia, some of which have been confirmed by inscriptions and other archaeological evidence.
• Chronicles of Sri Lanka: This material begins with the immigration of Prince Vijaya from India with his retinue and continues until the reign of King Mahasena, recounting wars, succession disputes, building of stupas and reliquaries, and other notable incidents. An extensive chronicle of the war between the Sinhala King Dutthagamani and Tamil invader, and later king, Elara (861 verses in the Mahavamsa compared with 13 verses in the Dipavamsa) may represent the incorporation of a popular epic from the vernacular tradition.[2]

While much of the contents of the Mahavamsa is derived from expansions of the material found in the Dipavamsa, several passages specifically dealing with the Abhayagiri vihara are omitted, suggesting that the Mahavamsa was more specifically associated with the Mahavihara.[2]

History

Buddhist monks of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya maintained chronicles of Sri Lankan history starting from the third century BCE. These annals were combined and compiled into a single document in the 5th Century while Dhatusena of Anuradhapura was ruling the Anuradhapura Kingdom. It was written based on prior ancient compilations known as the Atthakatha (sometimes Sinhalaatthakatha), which were commentaries written in Sinhala.[3] An earlier document known as the Dipavamsa (4th century CE) "Island Chronicles" is much simpler and contains less information than the Mahavamsa and was probably compiled using the Atthakatha on the Mahavamsa as well.

Authorship of the Mahavamsa is attributed to a monk called Mahānāma by the Mahavamsa-tika (see #Related Works). Mahānāma is described as residing in a monastery belonging to general Dighasanda and affiliated with the Mahavihara, but no other reliable biographical information is known.[2]

The commentator of the Mahavamsa says that Dighasanda was a nickname of a certain general of King Devanampiya Tissa and that he built the monastery known after his name.

-- Mahanama in the Pali Literature, by R. Siddhartha, The Indian Historical Quarterly

Mahānāma introduces the Mahavamsa with a passage that claims that his intention is to correct repetitions and shortcomings that afflicted the chronicle compiled by the ancients- this may refer either to the Dipavamsa or to the Sinhala Atthakatha.[2]

A companion volume, the Culavamsa "Lesser Chronicle", compiled by Sinhala monks, covers the period from the 4th century to the British takeover of Sri Lanka in 1815. The Culavamsa was compiled by a number of authors of different time periods.

The combined work, sometimes referred to collectively as the Mahavamsa, provides a continuous historical record of over two millennia, and is considered one of the world's longest unbroken historical accounts.[4] It is one of the few documents containing material relating to the Nāga and Yakkha peoples, indigenous inhabitants of Lanka prior to the legendary arrival of Prince Vijaya from Singha Pura of Kalinga.

As it often refers to the royal dynasties of India, the Mahavamsa is also valuable for historians who wish to date and relate contemporary royal dynasties in the Indian subcontinent. It is very important in dating the consecration of the Maurya Emperor Ashoka, which is related to the synchronicity with the Seleucid Empire and Alexander the Great.

Indian excavations in Sanchi and other locations, confirm the Mahavamsa account of the empire of Ashoka. The accounts given in the Mahavamsa are also amply supported by the numerous stone inscriptions, mostly in Sinhala, found in Sri Lanka.[5] K. Indrapala [6] has also upheld the historical value of the Mahavamsa. If not for the Mahavamsa, the story behind the large stupas in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, such as Ruwanwelisaya, Jetavanaramaya, Abhayagiri vihāra and other works of ancient engineering would never have been known.

The Mahavamsa first came to the attention of Western readers around 1809 CE, when Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of the British colony in Ceylon, sent manuscripts of it and other Sri Lankan chronicles to Europe for publication.[7] Eugène Burnouf produced a Romanized transliteration and translation into Latin in 1826, but these garnered relatively little attention.[8]:86 Working from Johnston's manuscripts, Edward Upham published an English translation in 1833, but it was marked by a number of errors in translation and interpretation, among them suggesting that the Buddha was born in Sri Lanka and built a monastery atop Adam's Peak.[8]:86 The first printed edition and widely read English translation was published in 1837 by George Turnour, an historian and officer of the Ceylon Civil Service.[8]:86

NOTE 2.—The general correctness with which Marco has here related the legendary history of Sakya's devotion to an ascetic life, as the preliminary to his becoming the Buddha or Divinely Perfect Being, shows what a strong impression the tale had made upon him. He is, of course, wrong in placing the scene of the history in Ceylon, though probably it was so told him, as the vulgar in all Buddhist countries do seem to localise the legends in regions known to them.

Sakya Sinha, Sakya Muni, or Gautama, originally called Siddhárta, was the son of Súddhodhana, the Kshatriya prince of Kapilavastu, a small state north of the Ganges, near the borders of Oudh...

-- The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

A German translation of Mahavamsa was completed by Wilhelm Geiger in 1912. This was then translated into English by Mabel Haynes Bode, and revised by Geiger.[9]

Wilhelm Ludwig Geiger (21 July 1856 to 2 September 1943) was a German orientalist in the fields of Indo-Iranian languages and the history of Iran and Sri Lanka. He was known as a specialist in Pali, Sinhala language and the Dhivehi language of the Maldives. He is especially known for his work on the Sri Lankan chronicles Mahāvaṃsa and Cūlavaṃsa of which he made critical editions of the Pali text and English translations with the help of assistant translators.

He was born in Nuremberg, the son of an evangelical clergyman, and was educated especially at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg under the Iranian scholar Friedrich von Spiegel. During his studies, he joined the fraternity Uttenruthia. After completing his Ph.D. thesis in 1878, he became a lecturer on ancient Iranian and Indian philology and then a master at a gymnasium . In 1891 he was offered a chair in Indo-European Comparative Philology at the University of Erlangen, succeeding Spiegel. His first published works were on ancient Iranian history, archeology and philology.

He traveled to Ceylon in 1895 to study the language. [2] [3]

He died in Neubiberg.

Among his children were the physicist Hans Geiger, inventor of the Geiger counter, and the meteorologist Rudolf Geiger.

-- Wilhelm Geiger, by Wikipedia

Historical and literary significance

Historiographical sources are rare in much of South Asia. As a result of the Mahavamsa, comparatively more is known about the history of the island of Ceylon and neighboring regions than that of most of the subcontinent. Its contents have aided in the identification and corroboration of archaeological sites and inscriptions associated with early Buddhism, the empire of Ashoka, and the Tamil kingdoms of southern India.[2]

The Mahamvasa covers the early history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, beginning with the time of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. It also briefly recounts the history of Buddhism in India, from the date of the Buddha's death to the 3rd Buddhist council where the Dharma was reviewed. Every chapter of the Mahavamsa ends by stating that it is written for the "serene joy of the pious". From the emphasis of its point-of-view, and being compiled to record the good deeds of the kings who were patrons of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya,[10] it has been said to support Sinhalese nationalism.[11][12]

Besides being an important historical source, the Mahavamsa is the most important epic poem in the Pali language. Its stories of battles and invasions, court intrigue, great constructions of stupas and water reservoirs, written in elegant verse suitable for memorization, caught the imagination of the Buddhist world of the time. Unlike many texts written in antiquity, it also discusses various aspects of the lives of ordinary people, how they joined the King's army or farmed. Thus the Mahavamsa was taken along the Silk Road to many Buddhist lands.[13] Parts of it were translated, retold, and absorbed into other languages. An extended version of the Mahavamsa, which gives many more details, has also been found in Southeast Asia.[14][2] The Mahavamsa gave rise to many other Pali chronicles, making Sri Lanka of that period probably the world's leading center in Pali literature.

Political significance

The Mahavamsa has, especially in modern Sri Lanka, acquired a significance as a document with a political message.[15] The Sinhalese majority often use Manavamsa as a proof of their claim that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist nation from historical time. The British historian Jane Russell[16] has recounted how a process of "Mahavamsa bashing" began in the 1930s, especially from within the Tamil Nationalist movement. The Mahavamsa, being a history of the Sinhala Buddhists, presented itself to the Tamil Nationalists and the Sinhala Nationalists as the hegemonic epic of the Sinhala people. This view was attacked by G. G. Ponnambalam, the leader of the Nationalist Tamils in the 1930s. He claimed that most of the Sinhala kings, including Vijaya, Kasyapa, and Parakramabahu, were Tamils. Ponnambalam's 1939 speech in Nawalapitiya, attacking the claim that Sri Lanka is a Sinhalese, Buddhist nation was seen as an act against the notion of creating a Buddhist only nation. The Sinhala majority responded with a mob riot, which engulfed Nawalapitiya, Passara, Maskeliya, and even Jaffna.[16]:148[17] The riots were rapidly put down by the British colonial government, but later this turned through various movements into the civil war in Sri Lanka which ended in 2009.

Historical accuracy

Early Western scholars like Otto Franke dismissed the possibility that the Mahavamsa contained reliable historical content, but subsequent evidence from inscriptions and archaeological finds have confirmed that there is a factual basis for many of the stories recorded in the Mahavamsa, including Ashoka's missionary work and the kings associated with founding various monasteries and stupas.[8]:47,90

Questions of authorship

According to some scholars such as Christopher I. Beckwith, Ashoka, whose name only appears in the Minor Rock Edicts, should be differentiated from the ruler Piyadasi, or Devanampiya Piyadasi (i.e. "Beloved of the Gods Piyadasi", "Beloved of the Gods" being a fairly widespread title for "King"), who is named as the author of the Major Pillar Edicts and the Major Rock Edicts. Beckwith also highlights the fact that [neither] Buddhism nor the Buddha are mentioned in the Major Edicts, but only in the Minor Edicts. Further, the Buddhist notions described in the Minor Edicts (such as the Buddhist canonical writings in Minor Edict No.3 at Bairat, the mention of a Buddha of the past Kanakamuni Buddha in the Nigali Sagar Minor Pillar Edict) are more characteristic of the "Normative Buddhism" of the Saka-Kushan period around the 2nd century CE.

This inscriptional evidence may suggest that Piyadasi and Ashoka were two different rulers. According to Beckwith, Piyadasi was living in the 3rd century BCE, probably the son of Chandragupta Maurya known to the Greeks as Amitrochates, and only advocating for piety ("Dharma") in his Major Pillar Edicts and Major Rock Edicts, without ever mentioning Buddhism, the Buddha or the Samgha. Since he does mention a pilgrimage to Sambhodi (Bodh Gaya, in Major Rock Edict No.8) however, he may have adhered to an "early, pietistic, popular" form of Buddhism. Also, the geographical spread of his inscription shows that Piyadasi ruled a vast Empire, contiguous with the Seleucid Empire in the West.

On the contrary, for Beckwith, Ashoka himself was a later king of the 1st-2nd century CE, whose name only appears explicitly in the Minor Rock Edicts and allusively in the Minor Pillar Edicts, and who does mention the Buddha and the Samgha, explicitly promoting Buddhism. He may have been an unknown or possibly invented ruler named Devanampriya Asoka, with the intent of propagating a later, more institutional version of the Buddhist faith. His inscriptions cover a very different and much smaller geographical area, clustering in Central India. According to Beckwith, the inscriptions of this later Ashoka were typical of the later forms of "normative Buddhism", which are well attested from inscriptions and Gandhari manuscripts dated to the turn of the millennium, and around the time of the Kushan Empire. The quality of the inscriptions of this Ashoka is significantly lower than the quality of the inscriptions of the earlier Piyadasi.

-- Edicts of Ashoka, by Wikipedia

Wilhelm Geiger was one of the first Western scholars to suggest that it was possible to separate useful historical information from the mythic and poetic elaborations of the chronicle. While other scholars had assumed that the Mahavamsa had been assembled from borrowed material from Indian Pali sources, Geiger hypothesized that the Mahavamsa had been based on earlier Sinhala sources that originated on the island of Ceylon. While Geiger did not believe that the details provided with every story and name were reliable, he broke from earlier scholars in believing that the Mahavamsa faithfully reflected an earlier tradition that had preserved the names and deeds of various royal and religious leaders, rather than being a pure work of heroic literary fiction. He regarded the early chapters of the Culavamsa as the most accurate, with the early chapters of the Mahavamsa being too remote historically and the later sections of the Culavamsa marked by excessive elaboration.[8]:90–92

Geiger's Sinhala student G. C. Mendis was more openly skeptical about certain portions of the text, specifically citing the story of the Sinhala ancestor Vijaya as being too remote historically from its source and too similar to an epic poem or other literary creation to be seriously regarded as history.[8]:94 The date of Vijaya's arrival is thought to have been artificially fixed to coincide with the date for the death of Gautama Buddha around 543 BCE.[18][19] The Chinese pilgrims Fa Hsien and Hsuan Tsang both recorded myths of the origins of the Sinhala people in their travels that varied significantly from the versions recorded in the Mahavamsa -- in one version, the Sinhala are descended from naga or nature spirits who traded with Indian merchants, and in another the Sinhala progenitor is a prince exiled for patricide who then slays a wealthy merchant and adopts his 500 children.[8]:58–9

The story of the Buddha's three visits to Sri Lanka are not recorded in any source outside of the Mahavamsa tradition.[8]:48 Moreover, the genealogy of the Buddha recorded in the Mahavamsa describes him as being the product of four cross cousin marriages. Cross-cousin marriage is associated historically with the Dravidian people of southern India -- both Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhala practiced cross-cousin marriage historically -- but exogamous marriage was the norm in the regions of northern India associated with the life of the Buddha.[20] No mention of cross-cousin marriage is found in earlier Buddhist sources, and scholars suspect that this genealogy was created in order to fit the Buddha into conventional Sri Lankan social structures for noble families.[8]:48–9[20]

The historical accuracy of Mahinda converting the Sri Lankan king to Buddhism is also debated. Hermann Oldenberg, a German scholar of Indology who has published studies on the Buddha and translated many Pali texts, considers this story a "pure invention". V. A. Smith (Author of Ashoka and Early history of India) also refers to this story as "a tissue of absurdities". V. A. Smith and Professor Hermann came to this conclusion due to Ashoka not mentioning the handing over of his son, Mahinda, to the temple to become a Buddhist missionary and Mahinda's role in converting the Sri Lankan king to Buddhism, in his 13th year Rock Edicts, particularly Rock-Edict XIII.[21] Sources outside of Sri Lanka and the Mahavamsa tradition do not mention Mahinda as Ashoka's son.[8]

There is also an inconsistency with the year on which Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries to Sri Lanka. According to the Mahavamsa, the missionaries arrived in 255 BCE, but according to Edict 13, it was five years earlier in 260 BCE.[21]

Related works

The Mahavamsa is believed to have originated from an earlier chronicle known as the Dipavamsa (4th century CE) ("Island Chronicles"). The Dipavamsa is much simpler and contains less information than the Mahavamsa and probably served as the nucleus of an oral tradition that was eventually incorporated into the written Mahavamsa. The Dipavamsa is believed to have been the first Pali text composed entirely in Ceylon.[2]

A subsequent work sometimes known as Culavamsa extends the Mahavamsa to cover the period from the reign of Mahasena of Anuradhapura (277–304 CE) until 1815, when the entire island was surrendered to the British throne. The Culavamsa contains three sections composed by five different authors (one anonymous) belonging to successive historical periods.[2]

In 1935, Buddhist monk Yagirala Pannananda published Mahavamsa Part III, a Sinhala language continuation of the Mahavamsa that covers the period from the end of the Culavamsa up until 1935.[8]:95–104 While not authorized or supported by any government or religious organization, this continuation of the Mahavamsa was later recognized by the government of Sri Lankan Prime Minister JR Jayawardene.

A commentary on the Mahavamsa, known as the Mahavamsa-tika, is believed to have been composed before the first additions composing the Culavamsa were written, likely some time between AD 1000 and AD 1250. This commentary provides explanations of ambiguous Pali terms used in the Mahavamsa, and in some cases adds additional details or clarifies differences between different versions of the Mahavamsa. Unlike the Mahavamsa itself, which is composed almost entirely from material associated with the Mahavihara, the Mahavamsa-tika makes several references to commentaries and alternate versions of the chronicle associated with the Abhayagiri vihara tradition.[2]

In Southeast Asia, a Pali work referred to as the 'Extended Mahavamsa' includes not only the text of the Sri Lankan Mahavamsa, but also elements of the Thupavamsa, Buddhavamsa, Mahavamsa commentaries, and quotations from various jatakas.[14][2] It is sometimes referred to in academic literature as the 'Kambodian Mahavamsa' or 'Khmer Mahavamsa' because it is distinguished by being recorded in the Khmer script. Its composition is attributed to an otherwise unknown monk called Moggallana and its exact date of composition and origin are unknown, but suspected to be Burma or Thailand.[2]

See also

• History of Sri Lanka
• Anuradhapura

References

1. Sailendra Nath Sen (1 January 1999). Ancient Indian History and Civilization. New Age International. p. 91. ISBN 978-81-224-1198-0.
2. Von Hinüber, Oskar (1997). A Handbook of Pali Literature (1st Indian ed.). New Delhi: Munishiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. pp. 87–93. ISBN 81-215-0778-2.
3. Oldenberg 1879.
4. Tripāṭhī, Śrīdhara, ed. (2008). Encyclopaedia of Pali Literature: The Pali canon. 1. Anmol. p. 117. ISBN 9788126135608.
5. Geiger's discussion of the historicity of the Mahavamsa;Paranavitana and Nicholas, A concise history of Ceylon(Ceylon University Press) 1961
6. K. Indrapala, Evolution of an Ethnicity, 2005
7. Harris, Elizabeth (2006). Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 12. ISBN 0415544424.
8. Kemper, Steven (1992). The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life(1st ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 33. ISBN 0801423953.
9. Mahavamsa. Ceylon Government. 1912.
10. In general, regarding the Mahavamsa's point-of-view, see Bartholomeusz, Tessa J. (2002). In Defense of Dharma: Just-war Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 978-0-7007-1681-4.
11. Senewiratne, Brian (4 February 2012). "Independence Day: A Day For Action, Not Mourning". Colombo Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 July 2016. Retrieved 12 July 2016.
12. E. F. C. Ludowyk's discussion of the connection between religion in the Mahavamsa and state-power is discussed in Scott, David (1994). "Historicizing Tradition". Formations of Ritual: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the Sinhala Yaktovil. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 191–192. ISBN 978-0-8166-2255-9..
13. "Mahavamsa, the great chronicle". Sunday Observer. 29 June 2008. Archived from the original on 2 February 2016. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
14. Dr. Hema Goonatilake, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka. 2003
15. H. Bechert, "The beginnings of Buddhist Historiography in Ceylon, Mahawamsa and Political Thinking", Ceylon Studies Seminar, Series 2, 1974
16. Communal politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, 1931–1947, Tissara Publishers, Colombo 1982
17. Hindu Organ, June 1, 1939 issue (Newspaper archived at the Jaffna University Library)
18. Rhoads Murphey (February 1957). "The Ruin of Ancient Ceylon". The Journal of Asian Studies. Association for Asian Studies. 16 (2): 181–200. doi:10.2307/2941377. JSTOR 2941377.
19. E.J. Thomas. (1913). BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES. Available: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/busc/busc03.htm. Last accessed 26 03 10.
20. Thomas R. Trautmann. “Consanguineous Marriage in Pali Literature.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 93, no. 2, 1973, pp. 158–180. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/598890. Accessed 14 May 2020.
21. Wilhelm Geiger (1912). Mahavamsa: Great Chronicle of Ceylon. New Dehli: Asian Educational Services. 16-20.

Bibliography

• Malalasekera, Gunapala Piyasena (2003). Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 978-81-206-1823-7.
• Oldenberg, Hermann (1879). Dipavamsa. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 978-81-206-0217-5.

Editions and translations

• Geiger, Wilhelm; Bode, Mabel Haynes (transl.); Frowde, H. (ed.): The Mahavamsa or, the great chronicle of Ceylon, London : Pali Text Society 1912.
• Guruge, Ananda W.P.: Mahavamsa. Calcutta: M. P. Birla Foundation 1990 (Classics of the East).
• Guruge, Ananda W. P. Mahavamsa: The Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka, A New Annotated Translation with Prolegomena, ANCL Colombo 1989
• Ruwan Rajapakse, Concise Mahavamsa, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2001
• Sumangala, H.; Silva Batuwantudawa, Don Andris de: The Mahawansha from first to thirty-sixth Chapter. Revised and edited, under Orders of the Ceylon Government by H. Sumangala, High Priest of Adam's Peak, and Don Andris de Silva Batuwantudawa, Pandit. Colombo 1883.
• Turnour, George (C.C.S.): The Mahawanso in Roman Characters with the Translation Subjoined, and an Introductory Essay on Pali Buddhistical Literature. Vol. I containing the first thirty eight Chapters. Cotto 1837.

Early translation of a Sinhalese version of the text

• Upham, Edward (ed.): The Mahavansi, the Raja-ratnacari, and the Raja-vali : forming the sacred and historical books of Ceylon; also, a collection of tracts illustrative of the doctrines and literature of Buddhism: translated from the Singhalese. London : Parbury, Allen, and Co. 1833; vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3

External links

• Geiger/Bode Translation of the Mahavamsa
• The Mahavamsa: The Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka
• "Concise Mahavamsa" on-line version of: Ruwan Rajapakse, P.E. (2003). Concise Mahavamsa: History of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Maplewood, NJ : Ruwan Rajapakse. ISBN 0-9728657-0-5.
• History of Sri Lanka
• Original Pali Text in Devanagari (अन्य > महावंस > पथमपरिच्छेद to तिसट्ठिम परिच्छेद )

**************************

Mahanama in the Pali Literature
by R. Siddhartha
The Indian Historical Quarterly 8:3 1932.09 pp.462--465 p.462

Mahanama in the Pali Literature

There are four persons by the name of Mahanama in the Pali literature of whom one is a king; the second is said to be the resident monk of the Dighasanda monastery at Anuradhapura, to whom king Moggallana (497-515 A.C.) offered a monastery called Pabbata Vihara built by him (Mahavamsa, ch. 39. v. 42);

In Southeast Asia, a Pali work referred to as the 'Extended Mahavamsa' includes not only the text of the Sri Lankan Mahavamsa, but also elements of the Thupavamsa, Buddhavamsa, Mahavamsa commentaries, and quotations from various jatakas. It is sometimes referred to in academic literature as the 'Kambodian Mahavamsa' or 'Khmer Mahavamsa' because it is distinguished by being recorded in the Khmer script. Its composition is attributed to an otherwise unknown monk called Moggallana and its exact date of composition and origin are unknown, but suspected to be Burma or Thailand.

-- Mahavamsa, by Wikipedia

the third is mentioned in the concluding lines of the commentary on the Patisambhidamagga as the author of that work who lived in the reign of Kumara Dhatusena, son of king Moggallana (515-524 A.C.);

The Patisambhidamagga (paṭisambhidā-; Pali for "path of discrimination"; sometimes called just Patisambhida for short; abbrevs.: Paṭis, Pṭs) is a Buddhist scripture, part of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism. It is included there as the twelfth book of the Sutta Pitaka's Khuddaka Nikaya. Tradition ascribes it to the Buddha's disciple Sariputta. It comprises 30 chapters on different topics, of which the first, on knowledge, makes up about a third of the book.

Tradition ascribes the Patisambhidamagga to the Buddha's great disciple, Sariputta. It bears some similarities to the Dasuttarasutta Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, which is also attributed to Sariputta.

According to German tradition of Indology this text was likely composed around the 2nd century CE. Indications of the relative lateness of the text include numerous quotations from the Sutta and Vinaya Pitaka, as well as an assumed familiarity with a variety of Buddhist legends and stories -- for example, the names of various arahants are given without any discussion of their identities. The term patisambhida does not occur in the older sutra and vinaya texts, but does appear in both the Abhidhamma and several other Khuddaka Nikaya texts regarded as relatively late. A variant form, pratisamvid, occurs in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and suggests that the concept itself was shared with other, non-Theravada sects. The Patisambhidamagga is also included in the Dipavamsa in a list of texts rejected by the Mahasanghikas. On the basis of this reference and certain thematic elements, AK Warder suggested that some form of the text may date to the 3rd Century BCE, the traditional date ascribed to the schism with the Mahasanghikas. L. S. Cousins associated it with the doctrinal divisions of the Second Buddhist Council and dated it to the first century BCE.

The Patisambhidamagga has been described as an "attempt to systematize the Abhidhamma" and thus as a possible precursor to the Visuddhimagga. The text's systematic approach and the presence of a matika summarizing the contents of the first section are both features suggestive of the Abhidhamma, but it also includes some features of the Sutta Pitaka, including repeated invocation of the standard sutta opening evaṃ me suttaṃ ('thus have I heard'). Its content and aspects of its composition overlap significantly with the Vibhanga, and A.K. Warder suggested that at some stage in its development it may have been classified as an Abhidhamma text.

Noa Ronkin suggests that the Patisambhidamagga likely dates from the era of the Abhidhamma's formation, and represents a parallel development of the interpretive traditions reflected by the Vibhanga and Dhammasangani...

The Patisambhidamagga was one of the last texts of the Pali Canon to be translated into English. Its technical language and frequent use of repetition and elision presented a challenge to translators and interpreters. A first translation by Bhikkhu Nanamoli was published posthumously, following extensive editing and reworking by AK Warder.

-- Paṭisambhidāmagga, by Wikipedia

and the fourth occurs in the concluding passage of the commentary on the Mahavamsa as the author of the original work. The last two of these four Mahanamas were undoubtedly great Pali scholars. Let us first see who were the three Mahanama Theras.

The commentator of the Patisambhidamagga says that he finished his work in the third year after the death of king Moggallana. So he must have lived at the time of king Moggallana and his son Kumara Dhatusena. His reference to the dead king Moggallana but not to the reigning king Kumara Dhatusena indicates his close association with the former. So it seems that he was the Thera Mahanama to whom king Moggallana presented a monastery called the Pabbata Vihara. Again, as he was a resident of the Dighasanda monastery he might have also been the author of the Mahavamsa as its commentator attributes that work to Mahanama Thera of the Dighasanda monastery. It is, however, difficult to identify these two theras because the thera Mahanama to whom the Pabbata monastery was presented was living at the Dighasanda monastery at the time when that presentation was made, and afterwards he must have been living at the new monastery built by the king. But the Thera Mahanama who wrote the commentary on the Patisambhidamagga lived, according to his own words, in a monastery known as the Uttaramanti Parivena. It is probable that the thera Mahanama who resided at one time at the Dighasanda monastery left it again for the Uttaramanti Parivena where he wrote the commentary on the Patisambhidamagga. It may also be that these two names, Dighasanda Parivena and Uttaramanti Parivena referred to one and the same monastery where Mahanama thera lived both during the life-time and after the death of king Moggallana. The commentator of the Mahavamsa says that Dighasanda was a nickname of a certain general of King Devanampiya Tissa and that he built the monastery known after his name.

In the Culavamsa (ch. 38, v. 16-17) it is stated that king Dhatusena in his boyhood lived as a novice under a thera who was his mother's brother and who was residing at the Dighasanda monastery. Here the name of the thera is not given. Is he the thera Mahanama to whom king Moggallana made a gift of the Pabbata Vihara, and is he also the author of the Mahavamsa?

According to a statement in the Culavamsa (ch. 38, v. 59) it seems that king Dhatusena was a lover of history and he was instrumental for the compilation of the Mahavamsa. The statement referred to is that king Dhatusena at the end of an anniversary celebration held in honour of the great Mahinda thera, who introduced Buddhism into Ceylon, ordered the promulgation of the chronicle of Ceylon throughout the Island, and for that purpose he gave a thousand coins. This indicates that a new work had come into existence which was not yet become popular, and this must have been the composition of Mahanama of the Dighasanda Parivena. All these facts go to show that the thera Mahanama of the Dighasanda monastery who wrote the Mahavamsa and the thera Mahanma of the Dighasanda monastery who was the favourite monk of king Moggallana, son of king Dhatusena, and the resident thera of the Dighasanda monastery were one and the same person. King Dhatusena is said to have come to the throne in 1006 B.E. (i.e. 463 A.D.) and king Moggallana died in 1060 B.E. (i.e. 517 A.D.). Now from the accession of king Dhatusena to the death of king Moggallana there were only 54 years. King Dhatusena did not die an old man. He met with an unnatural death at the hands of his eldest son, king Kassapa of Sigiriya fame. So when Dhatusena came to the throne he could not have been an old man. Then at the time of king Moggallana's death the age of Mahanama there could be between 79 and 89.(1) [I am, however, not inclined to accept that the thera Mahanama who wrote the commentary on the Patisambhidamagga was the same person as the author of the Pali Mahavamsa because a work of the former kind cannot be expected from such an old person, however clever he might have been.]

The view that the uncle of King Dhatusena was the author of the Mahavamsa could be proved further by the following fact:

The Mahavamsa stops abruptly in the middle of the 37th chapter without concluding it in the usual way with a verse in a different metre. This indicates that the author either could not finish his work owing to some unexpected trouble or died before he could complete it. Or, it might have been that the original work in Sinhalese ended there and he did not add anything to it. He only put into Pali verse what he found in the original Sinhalese version and stopped there.

The first two arguments cannot be the reasons for this abrupt ending because he had only one verse to compose to conclude it in the usual way, and this he could have done very easily. If the last one was the actual reason, it is difficult to understand why he did not finish it in the usual way. Its commentator also has not given any reason for this abrupt ending. That the old Sinhalese Mahavamsa ended just at the point where the Pali Mahavamsa stops is proved by the earlier Pali work, I mean, the Dipavamsa. It also stops exactly at the same place. His abrupt ending, I think, is due to the fact that Mahanama thera translated the Sinhalese Mahavamsa into Pali but as he wanted to write the chronicle further and bring the history up to his time he did not conclude it in the usual way. But before he could do so his benefactor king Dhatusena was put to death by his own son, Kassapa, and consequently there was much trouble in the country and the bhikkhus could not fufil his desire and the work remained unfinished till thera Dhammakitti took up the work after about seven centuries. This shows very clearly that king Dhatusena was instrumental for the writing of the Mahavamsa, and the chronicle of Ceylon which he ordered for promulgation was none but this work. Of course, the word used for the work in narration is Dipavamsa. But I do not think that it was used to indicate the work now known by that name. It was not used here as the special title of a particular book, but as denoting "the Vamsa of the Dipa," i.e. the chronicle of the Island. It could not be that king Dhatusena wanted to propagate that work called the Dipavamsa because it was defective and the defects were well-known. And moreover it was already popular in spite of its defects. So it is certain that the chronicle which king Dhatusena wanted to promulgate was not the work which we now call Dipavamsa. Therefore the Dipavamsa, that is the chronicle of the island, which he wanted to propagate was either the Sinhalese Mahavamsa preserved in the Mahavihara or the new work in Pall composed by Mahanama thera. But, as that Sinahlese work was also already popular surely it must have been this new work that he wanted to propagate.

It should be noted here that the word Mahavamsa was also not the name given to the book written by Mahanama thera. It was always referred to by its commentator as the Padyapadoruvamsa. This term mean the Mahavamsa in verse (Padyapada = metrical lines and uruvamsa = mahavamsa). This name shows also the nature of the book. It is Mahavamsa, but unlike the then existing Mahavamsa it is in metrical form. This shows again that the history of Ceylon that existed in prose was known as the Mahavamsa and the new work composed in Pali was given the name of Padyapadoruvamsa just to distinguish it from the first one. I have found that the commentator has used this name in no less than 12 places but never the name Mahavamsa.

It is noteworthy here that the author of the Pali Mahavamsa in his opening verse uses the term Mahavamsa. But the commentator says that the author referred by that word to the then existing Sinhalese Mahavamsa and not to the one composed in Pali.

R. SIDDHARTHA

[admin]

Dipavamsa [Ceylonese Buddhist chronicles]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/13/21

Highlights:

The Dīpavaṃsa… is believed to be compiled from Atthakatha and other sources around the 3rd to 4th century CE. Together with the Mahavamsa, it is the source of many accounts of ancient history of Sri Lanka and India….

It is probably authored by several Buddhist monks or nuns of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya in the 3rd-4th century. The Dipavamsa was likely the first completely new Pali text composed in Sri Lanka; it was also among the last texts to be composed anonymously….

The Dīpavaṃsa lauds the Theravāda as a "great banyan tree," and dismissively portrays the other early Buddhist schools as thorns…

Regarding the Vijaya legend, Dipavamsa has tried to be less super-natural than the later work, Mahavamsa in referring to the husband of the Kalinga-Vanga princess, ancestor of Vijya, as a man named Sinha who was an outlaw that attacked caravans en route. In the meantime, Sinha-bahu and Sinhasivali, as king and queen of the kingdom of Lala (Lata), "gave birth to twin sons, sixteen times." The eldest was Vijaya and the second was Sumitta. As Vijaya was of cruel and unseemly conduct, the enraged people requested the king to kill his son. But the king caused him and his seven hundred followers to leave the kingdom, and they landed in Sri Lanka, at a place called Tamba-panni, on the exact day when the Buddha passed into Maha Parinibbana….

The Dipavamsa was translated into English by Hermann Oldenberg in 1879.

-- Dipavamsa, by Wikipedia

The identification of Raja Priyadarsin with Raja Asoka was based entirely upon Ceylonese Buddhist chronicles. Talboys Wheeler wrote in 1874, "The identification of Raja Priyadarsin of the Edicts with Raja Asoka of the Buddhist chronicles was first pointed out by Mr. Turnour who rested it upon a passage in the Dipavamsa. The late Prof. [Horace Hayman] Wilson objected to this identification."1 [History of India, Hindu, Buddhist and Brahmanical, 280.] Prof. Rhys Davids declared, "It is not too much to say that without the help of the Ceylon Books, the striking identification of the King Piyadassi of the edicts with the king Asoka of history would never have been made."2 [Buddhist India, 273.] But the Ceylon chronicles are admitted to be utterly worthless as history, and according to Wheeler, "the Buddhist chronicles might be dismissed as a monkish jumble of myths and names,3 [EHI, 171] and even Vincent Smith in the preface to his Asoka himself said, "I reject absolutely the Ceylonese chronology...... The undeserved credit given to the monks of Ceylon has been a great hindrance to the right understanding of ancient Indian history." And yet it is on such undeserved credit that the identity of Priyadarsin with Asoka Maurya rests to this day.

-- History of Classical Sanskrit Literature, by Kavyavinoda, Sahityaratnakara M. Krishnamachariar, M.A., M.I., Ph.D., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of London (Of the Madras Judicial Service), Assisted by His Son M. Srinivasachariar, B.A., B.L., Advocate, Madras, 1937

Dīpavaṃsa
Type: Post-canonical text; Vaṃsa
Composition: 3rd-4th Century CE
Attribution: Anonymous
PTS Abbreviation: Dīp
Pāli literature

The Dīpavaṃsa[1] (Pali: [diːpɐˈʋɐ̃sɐ], "Chronicle of the Island") is the oldest historical record of Sri Lanka. The chronicle is believed to be compiled from Atthakatha and other sources around the 3rd to 4th century CE. Together with the Mahavamsa, it is the source of many accounts of ancient history of Sri Lanka and India. Its importance resides not only as a source of history and legend, but also as an important early work in Buddhist and Pali literature.

Contents

It is probably authored by several Buddhist monks or nuns of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya in the 3rd-4th century. The Dipavamsa was likely the first completely new Pali text composed in Sri Lanka; it was also among the last texts to be composed anonymously.[2][3]

The preamble begins with "Listen! I shall relate the chronicle of the Buddha's visits to the island, the arrival of the Tooth Relic and the Bodhi tree, the advent of the Buddha's doctrine, the rise of the teachers, the spread of Buddhism in the island and the coming of Vijaya the Chief of Men".[4] Dhatusena of Anuradhapura (5th century) had ordered the Dipavamsa be recited at the Mahinda festival held annually in Anuradhapura.

Dhatusena's ancestry is uncertain. The Cūḷavaṃsa, the ancient chronicle of Sri Lanka, tells us that he was of royal lineage whose ancestors had fled the royal capital about three hundred years earlier.

-- Dhatusena of Anuradhapura, by Wikipedia

The Dipavamsa refers to three visits to the Island by the Buddha, the places being Kelaniya, Deegavapi Raja Maha Viharaya, the place where the Bo-sapling was later planted within the Maha Mewna-uyana (Park) of Anuradhapura. It does not make any mention of the Buddha visiting Sri Pada.

Depiction of Buddhist sects

Starting with the Dīpavaṃsa in the 4th century, the Theravādins of the Mahāvihāra in Sri Lanka attempted to identify themselves with the original Sthavira sect of India. The Dīpavaṃsa lauds the Theravāda as a "great banyan tree," and dismissively portrays the other early Buddhist schools as thorns (kaṇṭaka).[5]

These 17 sects are schismatic,
only one is non-schismatic.
With the non-schismatic sect,
there are eighteen in all.
Like a great banyan tree,
the Theravāda is supreme,
The Dispensation of the Conqueror,
complete, without lack or excess.
The other sects arose
like thorns on the tree.

— Dīpavaṃsa, 4.90–91[6]

Relationship to the Mahavamsa

Regarding the Vijaya legend, Dipavamsa has tried to be less super-natural than the later work, Mahavamsa in referring to the husband of the Kalinga-Vanga princess, ancestor of Vijya, as a man named Sinha who was an outlaw that attacked caravans en route. In the meantime, Sinha-bahu and Sinhasivali, as king and queen of the kingdom of Lala (Lata), "gave birth to twin sons, sixteen times." The eldest was Vijaya and the second was Sumitta. As Vijaya was of cruel and unseemly conduct, the enraged people requested the king to kill his son. But the king caused him and his seven hundred followers to leave the kingdom, and they landed in Sri Lanka, at a place called Tamba-panni, on the exact day when the Buddha passed into Maha Parinibbana.

The Dipavamsa gives a fuller account of the arrival of Theri Sangamitta (daughter to Asoka), but the epic story of Dutugamunu is treated only briefly, in ten Pali stanzas, while the Mahavamsa devoted ten chapters to it. Due to the greater attention given to the nuns of Sri Lanka in the Dipavamsa, as well as the description of Sangamitta as being particularly proficient at history, Hugh Nevill suggested that the Dipavamsa might have originated with the nuns community at one or more of the Viharas, rather than being composed by monks.[3]

The Dipavamsa is considered "source material" to the Mahavamsa. The latter is more coherently organized, and is probably the greatest religious and historical epic in the Pali language. The historiography (i.e., the chronology of kings, battles etc.) given in the Mahavamsa, and to that extent in the Dipavasma, are believed to be largely correct from about the time of the death of Asoka.[7][8]

Translations

The Dipavamsa was translated into English by Hermann Oldenberg in 1879.[9] It was studied by B. C. Law in 1947.[10]

See also

• History of Sri Lanka
• Anuradhapura
• Polonnaruwa
• Mahavamsa
• Bodhi Vamsa

References

1. Also transcribed Deepavamsa.
2. Von Hinüber, Oskar (1997). A Handbook of Pali Literature (1st Indian ed.). New Delhi: Munishiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. ISBN 81-215-0778-2.
3. Malalasekera, G.P. (1928). The Pali Literature of Ceylon (1998 ed.). Colombo: Buddhist Publication Society of Sri Lanka. pp. 132–36. ISBN 9552401887.
4. Differences between the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa.
5. Morgan, Diane. Essential Buddhism: A Comprehensive Guide to Belief and Practice. 2010. p. 113
6. Sujato, Bhante (2012), Sects & Sectarianism: The Origins of Buddhist Schools, Santipada, p. i, ISBN 9781921842085
7. [1] See Geiger's defence of the historicity of the Mahavamsa
8. K. M. de Silva, History of Sri Lanka (Penguin) 1995
9. “The Dîpavaṃsa; an ancient Buddhist historical record”, edited and translated by Hermann Oldenberg. London, Williams and Norgate, 1879.
10. Law, B. C. (1947). On the Chronicles of Ceylon. Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal.

External links

• "Dīpavansa" . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.

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Henri Cordier
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/21

CHAPTER XV. THE SAME CONTINUED. THE HISTORY OF SAGAMONI BORCAN [SAKYA-MUNI] AND THE BEGINNING OF IDOLATRY.

Furthermore you must know that in the Island of Seilan [Ceylon] there is an exceeding high mountain; it rises right up so steep and precipitous that no one could ascend it, were it not that they have taken and fixed to it several great and massive iron chains, so disposed that by help of these men are able to mount to the top. And I tell you they say that on this mountain is the sepulchre of Adam our first parent; at least that is what the Saracens [Arab Muslims] say. But the Idolaters say that it is the sepulchre of SAGAMONI BORCAN, before whose time there were no idols. They hold him to have been the best of men, a great saint in fact, according to their fashion, and the first in whose name idols were made.[NOTE 1]

He was the son, as their story goes, of a great and wealthy king. And he was of such an holy temper that he would never listen to any worldly talk, nor would he consent to be king. And when the father saw that his son would not be king, nor yet take any part in affairs, he took it sorely to heart. And first he tried to tempt him with great promises, offering to crown him king, and to surrender all authority into his hands. The son, however, would none of his offers; so the father was in great trouble, and all the more that he had no other son but him, to whom he might bequeath the kingdom at his own death. So, after taking thought on the matter, the King caused a great palace to be built, and placed his son therein, and caused him to be waited on there by a number of maidens, the most beautiful that could anywhere be found. And he ordered them to divert themselves with the prince, night and day, and to sing and dance before him, so as to draw his heart towards worldly enjoyments. But 'twas all of no avail, for none of those maidens could ever tempt the king's son to any wantonness, and he only abode the firmer in his chastity, leading a most holy life, after their manner thereof. And I assure you he was so staid a youth that he had never gone out of the palace, and thus he had never seen a dead man, nor any one who was not hale and sound; for the father never allowed any man that was aged or infirm to come into his presence. It came to pass however one day that the young gentleman took a ride, and by the roadside he beheld a dead man. The sight dismayed him greatly, as he never had seen such a sight before. Incontinently he demanded of those who were with him what thing that was? and then they told him it was a dead man. "How, then," quoth the king's son, "do all men die?" "Yea, forsooth," said they. Whereupon the young gentleman said never a word, but rode on right pensively. And after he had ridden a good way he fell in with a very aged man who could no longer walk, and had not a tooth in his head, having lost all because of his great age. And when the king's son beheld this old man he asked what that might mean, and wherefore the man could not walk? Those who were with him replied that it was through old age the man could walk no longer, and had lost all his teeth. And so when the king's son had thus learned about the dead man and about the aged man, he turned back to his palace and said to himself that he would abide no longer in this evil world, but would go in search of Him Who dieth not, and Who had created him.[NOTE 2]

So what did he one night but take his departure from the palace privily, and betake himself to certain lofty and pathless mountains. And there he did abide, leading a life of great hardship and sanctity, and keeping great abstinence, just as if he had been a Christian. Indeed, an he had but been so, he would have been a great saint of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.[NOTE 3] And when he died they found his body and brought it to his father. And when the father saw dead before him that son whom he loved better than himself, he was near going distraught with sorrow. And he caused an image in the similitude of his son to be wrought in gold and precious stones, and caused all his people to adore it. And they all declared him to be a god; and so they still say. [NOTE 4]

They tell moreover that he hath died fourscore and four times. The first time he died as a man, and came to life again as an ox; and then he died as an ox and came to life again as a horse, and so on until he had died fourscore and four times; and every time he became some kind of animal. But when he died the eighty-fourth time they say he became a god. And they do hold him for the greatest of all their gods. And they tell that the aforesaid image of him was the first idol that the Idolaters ever had; and from that have originated all the other idols. And this befel in the Island of Seilan [Ceylon] in India.

The Idolaters come thither on pilgrimage from very long distances and with great devotion, just as Christians go to the shrine of Messer Saint James in Gallicia. And they maintain that the monument on the mountain is that of the king's son, according to the story I have been telling you; and that the teeth, and the hair, and the dish that are there were those of the same king's son, whose name was Sagamoni Borcan, or Sagamoni the Saint. But the Saracens also come thither on pilgrimage in great numbers, and they say that it is the sepulchre of Adam our first father, and that the teeth, and the hair, and the dish were those of Adam.[NOTE 5]

Whose they were in truth, God knoweth; howbeit, according to the Holy Scripture of our Church, the sepulchre of Adam is not in that part of the world.

Now it befel that the Great Kaan heard how on that mountain there was the sepulchre of our first father Adam, and that some of his hair and of his teeth, and the dish from which he used to eat, were still preserved there. So he thought he would get hold of them somehow or another, and despatched a great embassy for the purpose, in the year of Christ, 1284. The ambassadors, with a great company, travelled on by sea and by land until they arrived at the island of Seilan [Ceylon], and presented themselves before the king. And they were so urgent with him that they succeeded in getting two of the grinder teeth, which were passing great and thick; and they also got some of the hair, and the dish from which that personage used to eat, which is of a very beautiful green porphyry. And when the Great Kaan's ambassadors had attained the object for which they had come they were greatly rejoiced, and returned to their lord. And when they drew near to the great city of Cambaluc, where the Great Kaan was staying, they sent him word that they had brought back that for which he had sent them. On learning this the Great Kaan was passing glad, and ordered all the ecclesiastics and others to go forth to meet these reliques, which he was led to believe were those of Adam.

And why should I make a long story of it? In sooth, the whole population of Cambaluc went forth to meet those reliques, and the ecclesiastics took them over and carried them to the Great Kaan, who received them with great joy and reverence.[NOTE 6] And they find it written in their Scriptures that the virtue of that dish is such that if food for one man be put therein it shall become enough for five men: and the Great Kaan averred that he had proved the thing and found that it was really true.[NOTE 7]

So now you have heard how the Great Kaan came by those reliques; and a mighty great treasure it did cost him! The reliques being, according to the Idolaters, those of that king's son.

NOTE 1.—Sagamoni Borcan is, as [William] Marsden points out, SAKYA-MUNI, or Gautama-Buddha, with the affix BURKHAN, or "Divinity," which is used by the Mongols as the synonym of Buddha.

NOTE 2.—The general correctness with which Marco has here related the legendary history of Sakya's devotion to an ascetic life, as the preliminary to his becoming the Buddha or Divinely Perfect Being, shows what a strong impression the tale had made upon him. He is, of course, wrong in placing the scene of the history in Ceylon, though probably it was so told him, as the vulgar in all Buddhist countries do seem to localise the legends in regions known to them.

Sakya Sinha, Sakya Muni, or Gautama, originally called Siddhárta, was the son of Súddhodhana, the Kshatriya prince of Kapilavastu, a small state north of the Ganges, near the borders of Oudh. His high destiny had been foretold, as well as the objects that would move him to adopt the ascetic life. To keep these from his knowledge, his father caused three palaces to be built, within the limits of which the prince should pass the three seasons of the year, whilst guards were posted to bar the approach of the dreaded objects. But these precautions were defeated by inevitable destiny and the power of the Devas.

When the prince was sixteen he was married to the beautiful Yasodhara, daughter of the King of Koli, and 40,000 other princesses also became the inmates of his harem.

"Whilst living in the midst of the full enjoyment of every kind of pleasure, Siddhárta one day commanded his principal charioteer to prepare his festive chariot; and in obedience to his commands four lily-white horses were yoked. The prince leaped into the chariot, and proceeded towards a garden at a little distance from the palace, attended by a great retinue. On his way he saw a decrepit old man, with broken teeth, grey locks, and a form bending towards the ground, his trembling steps supported by a staff (a Deva had taken this form)…. The prince enquired what strange figure it was that he saw; and he was informed that it was an old man. He then asked if the man was born so, and the charioteer answered that he was not, as he was once young like themselves. 'Are there,' said the prince, 'many such beings in the world?' 'Your highness,' said the charioteer, 'there are many.' The prince again enquired, 'Shall I become thus old and decrepit?' and he was told that it was a state at which all beings must arrive."

The prince returns home and informs his father of his intention to become an ascetic, seeing how undesirable is life tending to such decay. His father conjures him to put away such thoughts, and to enjoy himself with his princesses, and he strengthens the guards about the palaces. Four months later like circumstances recur, and the prince sees a leper, and after the same interval a dead body in corruption. Lastly, he sees a religious recluse, radiant with peace and tranquillity, and resolves to delay no longer. He leaves his palace at night, after a look at his wife Yasodhara and the boy just born to him, and betakes himself to the forests of Magadha, where he passes seven years in extreme asceticism. At the end of that time he attains the Buddhahood. (See Hardy's Manual p. 151 seqq.) The latter part of the story told by Marco, about the body of the prince being brought to his father, etc., is erroneous. Sakya was 80 years of age when he died under the sál trees in Kusinára...

NOTE 6.—The Pâtra, or alms-pot, was the most valued legacy of Buddha. It had served the three previous Buddhas of this world-period, and was destined to serve the future one, Maitreya. The Great Asoka sent it to Ceylon. Thence it was carried off by a Tamul chief in the 1st century, A.D., but brought back we know not how, and is still shown in the Malagawa Vihara at Kandy. As usual in such cases, there were rival reliques, for Fa-hian found the alms-pot preserved at Pesháwar. Hiuen Tsang says in his time it was no longer there, but in Persia. And indeed the Pâtra from Pesháwar, according to a remarkable note by Sir Henry Rawlinson, is still preserved at Kandahár, under the name of Kashkul (or the Begging-pot), and retains among the Mussulman Dervishes the sanctity and miraculous repute which it bore among the Buddhist Bhikshus. Sir Henry conjectures that the deportation of this vessel, the palladium of the true Gandhára (Pesháwar), was accompanied by a popular emigration, and thus accounts for the transfer of that name also to the chief city of Arachosia. (Koeppen, I. 526; Fah-hian, p. 36; H. Tsang, II. 106; J.R.A.S. XI. 127.)

Sir E. Tennent, through Mr. Wylie (to whom this book owes so much), obtained the following curious Chinese extract referring to Ceylon (written 1350): "In front of the image of Buddha there is a sacred bowl, which is neither made of jade nor copper, nor iron; it is of a purple colour, and glossy, and when struck it sounds like glass. At the commencement of the Yuen Dynasty (i.e. under Kúblái) three separate envoys were sent to obtain it." Sanang Setzen also corroborates Marco's statement: "Thus did the Khaghan (Kúblái) cause the sun of religion to rise over the dark land of the Mongols; he also procured from India images and reliques of Buddha; among others the Pâtra of Buddha, which was presented to him by the four kings (of the cardinal points), and also the chandana chu" (a miraculous sandal-wood image). (Tennent, I. 622; Schmidt, p. 119.)

The text also says that several teeth of Buddha were preserved in Ceylon, and that the Kaan's embassy obtained two molars. Doubtless the envoys were imposed on; no solitary case in the amazing history of that relique, for the Dalada, or tooth relique, seems in all historic times to have been unique. This, "the left canine tooth" of the Buddha, is related to have been preserved for 800 years at Dantapura ("Odontopolis"), in Kalinga, generally supposed to be the modern Púri or Jagannáth. Here the Brahmans once captured it and carried it off to Palibothra, where they tried in vain to destroy it. Its miraculous resistance converted the king, who sent it back to Kalinga. About A.D. 311 the daughter of King Guhasiva fled with it to Ceylon. In the beginning of the 14th century it was captured by the Tamuls and carried to the Pandya country on the continent, but recovered some years later by King Parakrama III., who went in person to treat for it. In 1560 the Portuguese got possession of it and took it to Goa. The King of Pegu, who then reigned, probably the most powerful and wealthy monarch who has ever ruled in Further India, made unlimited offers in exchange for the tooth; but the archbishop prevented the viceroy from yielding to these temptations, and it was solemnly pounded to atoms by the prelate, then cast into a charcoal fire, and finally its ashes thrown into the river of Goa.

The King of Pegu was, however, informed by a crafty minister of the King of Ceylon that only a sham tooth had been destroyed by the Portuguese, and that the real relique was still safe. This he obtained by extraordinary presents, and the account of its reception at Pegu, as quoted by Tennent from De Couto, is a curious parallel to Marco's narrative of the Great Kaan's reception of the Ceylon reliques at Cambaluc. The extraordinary object still so solemnly preserved at Kandy is another forgery, set up about the same time. So the immediate result of the viceroy's virtue was that two reliques were worshipped instead of one!

The possession of the tooth has always been a great object of desire to Buddhist sovereigns. In the 11th century King Anarauhta, of Burmah, sent a mission to Ceylon to endeavour to procure it, but he could obtain only a "miraculous emanation" of the relique. A tower to contain the sacred tooth was (1855), however, one of the buildings in the palace court of Amarapura. A few years ago the King of Burma repeated the mission of his remote predecessor, but obtained only a model, and this has been deposited within the walls of the palace at Mandalé, the new capital. (Turnour in J.A.S.B. VI. 856 seqq.; Koeppen, I. 521; Tennent, I. 388, II. 198 seqq.; MS. Note by Sir A. Phayre; Mission to Ava, 136.)

Of the four eye-teeth of Sakya, one, it is related, passed to the heaven of Indra; the second to the capital of Gandhára; the third to Kalinga; the fourth to the snake-gods. The Gandhára tooth was perhaps, like the alms-bowl, carried off by a Sassanid invasion, and may be identical with that tooth of Fo, which the Chinese annals state to have been brought to China in A.D. 530 by a Persian embassy. A tooth of Buddha is now shown in a monastery at Fu-chau; but whether this be either the Sassanian present, or that got from Ceylon by Kúblái, is unknown. Other teeth of Buddha were shown in Hiuen Tsang's time at Balkh, at Nagarahára (or Jalálábád), in Kashmir, and at Kanauj. (Koeppen, u.s.; Fortune, II. 108; H. Tsang, II. 31, 80, 263.)

[Illustration: Teeth of Budda. 1. At Kandy, after Tennent. 2. At Fu-Chau from Fortune.]

NOTE 7.—Fa-hian writes of the alms-pot at Pesháwar, that poor people could fill it with a few flowers, whilst a rich man should not be able to do so with 100, nay, with 1000 or 10,000 bushels of rice; a parable doubtless originally carrying a lesson, like Our Lord's remark on the widow's mite, but which hardened eventually into some foolish story like that in the text.

The modern Mussulman story at Kandahar is that the alms-pot will contain any quantity of liquor without overflowing.

This Pâtra is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. Mystical powers of nourishment are ascribed also to the Grail in the European legends. German scholars have traced in the romances of the Grail remarkable indications of Oriental origin. It is not impossible that the alms-pot of Buddha was the prime source of them. Read the prophetic history of the Pâtra as Fa-hian heard it in India (p. 161); its mysterious wanderings over Asia till it is taken up into the heaven Tushita where Maitreya the Future Buddha dwells. When it has disappeared from earth the Law gradually perishes, and violence and wickedness more and more prevail:

—"What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?
* * * * * If a man
Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once,
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear'd."
—Tennyson's Holy Grail

...

In a paper on Burkhan printed in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, XXXVI., 1917, pp. 390-395, Dr. Berthold Laufer has come to the following conclusion: "Burkhan in Mongol by no means conveys exclusively the limited notion of Buddha, but, first of all, signifies 'deity, god, gods,' and secondly 'representation or image of a god.' This general significance neither inheres in the term Buddha nor in Chinese Fo; neither do the latter signify 'image of Buddha'; only Mongol burkhan has this force, because originally it conveyed the meaning of a shamanistic image. From what has been observed on the use of the word burkhan in the shamanistic or pre-Buddhistic religions of the Tungusians, Mongols and Turks, it is manifest that the word well existed there before the arrival of Buddhism, fixed in its form and meaning, and was but subsequently transferred to the name of Buddha."

-- The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

Henri Cordier
Portrait of Henri Cordier at work, by Gustave Caillebotte (1883)
Born: 8 August 1849, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Died: 16 March 1925 (aged 75), Paris, France
Known for East Asian studies

Henri Cordier (8 August 1849 – 16 March 1925) was a French linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, editor and Orientalist. He was President of the Société de Géographie (French, "Geographical Society") in Paris.[1] Cordier was a prominent figure in the development of East Asian and Central Asian scholarship in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Though he had little actual knowledge of the Chinese language, Cordier had a particularly strong impact on the development of Chinese scholarship, and was a mentor of the noted French sinologist Édouard Chavannes.

Early life

Cordier was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States. He arrived in France in 1852; and his family moved to Paris in 1855. He was educated at the Collège Chaptal and in England.[2]

In 1869 at age 20, he sailed for Shanghai, where he worked at an English bank. During the next two years, he published several articles in local newspapers. In 1872, he was made librarian of the North China branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. In this period, about twenty articles were published in Shanghai Evening Courier, North China Daily News, and Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.[2]

Career

In 1876, he was named secretary of a Chinese government program for Chinese students studying in Europe.[2]

In Paris, Cordier was a professor at l'École spéciale des Langues orientales, which is known today as the Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (L’Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, INALCO).[3] He joined the faculty in 1881; and he was a professor from 1881-1925.[2] He contributed a number of articles to the Catholic Encyclopedia.[4]

Cordier was also a professeur at l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques, which is today known as the National Foundation of Political Studies (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques) and the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris).[3]

Contributions to Sinology

Although he had only a slight knowledge of the language, Cordier made major contributions to Sinology.

"Cordier," as the Bibliotheca Sinica "is sometimes affectionately referred to," is "the standard enumerative bibliography" of 70,000 works on China up to 1921. Even though the author did not know Chinese, he was thorough and highly familiar with European publications. Endymion Wilkinson also praises Cordier for including the full titles, often the tables of contents, and reviews of most books.[5]

Cordier was a founding editor of T'oung Pao, which was the first international journal of Chinese Studies. Along with Gustaaf Schlegel, he helped to establish the prominent sinological journal T'oung Pao in 1890.[3]

Honors

• Royal Asiatic Society, honorary member, 1893.[2]
• Royal Geographical Society, corresponding member, 1908.[2]
• Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, member, 1908.[2]
• Société Asiatique, vice-president, 1918-1925.[2]
• Société de Géographie, President, 1924-1925.[1]

Selected works

Cordier's published writings encompass 1,033 works in 1,810 publications in 13 languages and 7,984 library holdings.[6]

• Bibliotheca sinica. Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l'Empire chinois, Vol. 1; Vol. 2. (1878-1895)
• Bibliographie des œuvres de Beaumarchais (1883)
• La France en Chine au XVIIIe siècle: documents inédits/publiés sur les manuscrits conservés au dépôt des affaires étrangères, avec une introduction et des notes (1883)
• Mémoire sur la Chine adressé à Napoléon Ier: mélanges, Vol. 1; Vol. 2; by F. Renouard de Ste-Croix, edited by Henri Cordier. (1895-1905)
• Les Origines de deux établissements français dans l'Extrême-Orient: Chang-Haï, Ning-Po, documents inédits, publiés, avec une introduction et des notes (1896)
• La Révolution en Chine: les origines (1900)
• Conférence sur les relations de la Chine avec l'Europe. (1901)
• L'Imprimerie sino-européenne en Chine: bibliographie des ouvrages publiés en Chine par les Européens au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle. (1901)
• Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l'Empire chinois: bibliotheca sinica, Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3; Vol. 4. (1904-1907)
• The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 with Henry Yule (1903)
• Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 (1910)
• L'Expédition de Chine de 1860, histoire diplomatique, notes et documents (1906)
• Bibliotheca Indosinica. Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à la péninsule indochinoise (1912)
• Bibliotheca Japonica. Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l'empire Japonais rangés par ordre chronologique jusqu'à 1870 (1912)
• Mémoires Concernant l'Asie Orientale : vol.1 Mémoires Concernant l'Asie Orientale : vol.2 Mémoires Concernant l'Asie Orientale : vol.3 (1913)
• Le Voyage à la Chine au XVIIIe siècle. Extrait du journal de M. Bouvet, commandant le vaisseau de la Compagnie des Indes le Villevault (1765-1766) (1913)
• Cathay and the Way Thither: being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China (1913)
• Bibliographie stendhalienne (1914)
• La Suppression de la compagnie de Jésus et la mission de Péking (1918)
• The travels of Marco Polo (1920), with Henry Yule
• Histoire générale de la Chine et de ses relations avec les pays étrangers: depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'à la chute de la dynastie Mandchoue, Vol. I, Depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'à la chute de la dynastie T'ang (907); Vol. 2, Depuis les cinq dynasties (907) jusqu'à la chute des Mongols (1368); Vol. 3, Depuis l'avènement des Mings (1368) jusqu'à la mort de Kia K'ing (1820); Vol. 4, Depuis l'avènement de Tao Kouang (1821) jusqu'à l'époque actuelle. (1920-1921)
• La Chine. (1921)
• La Chine en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1910)
• Chine : vol.1

Notes

1. La Société de Géographie Archived 2007-02-07 at the Wayback Machine, List of Presidents Archived 2010-07-02 at the Wayback Machine
2. Aurousseau, L. (1925). Nécrologie, Henri Cordier," Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient, Vol. 25, Issue 25, pp. 279-286.
3. T'oung Pao, Vol. I, first issue cover page, 1890.
4. "Cordier, Henri", The Catholic Encyclopedia and Its Makers, New York, the Encyclopedia Press, 1917, p. 34 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
5. Endymion Wilkinson. Chinese History: A New Manual. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 2013 ISBN 9780674067158) p. 986
6. WorldCat Identities Archived 2010-12-30 at the Wayback Machine: Cordier, Henri 1849-1925

References

• Cordier, Henri. (1892). Half a Decade of Chinese studies (1886-1891). Leyden: E.J. Brill. OCLC 2174926
• Pelliot, Paul (1925). "Henri Cordier (1849-1925)". T'oung Pao (in French). 24 (1): 1–15. doi:10.1163/156853226X00011. JSTOR 4526773.
• Ross, E. Denison (1925). "M. Henri Cordier". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (3): 571–2. JSTOR 25220805.
• Yetts, W. Perceval (1925). "Obituary – Professor Henri Cordier". Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London. 3 (4): 855–6. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00000781. JSTOR 607118.
• Ting Chang, “Crowdsourcing avant la lettre: Henri Cordier and French Sinology, ca. 1875–1925”, L'Esprit créateur, Volume 56, Number 3, Fall 2016, Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 47-60.

External links

• T’oung Pao Brill's official website
• Works by Henri Cordier at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Henri Cordier at Internet Archive
• Downloadable issues of T'oung pao

[admin]

Royal Asiatic Society China
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/21

The Royal Asiatic Society China is a learned society based in Shanghai and Beijing, China.

It was established in Shanghai in 1857 by a small group of British and American expatriates as the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society, and within a year had achieved affiliation with the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and become the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (NCBRAS). However, following the death of the society's first president, American missionary Elijah Coleman Bridgman, in 1861 the society became moribund, but was rescued in 1864 by Sir Harry Smith Parkes, the British Consul.[1]

The Society’s stated intention was to study and disseminate knowledge of China and surrounding nations by publishing a journal and establishing a library and museum. The first journal was published in 1858 and thereafter for 90 years. The Society’s original home comprised a ground-floor reading room, library and lecture hall, but was expanded in 1874 to house a museum on the floor above. In 1930 the building was condemned and although funds were raised to build new premises, the Great Depression and the second Sino-Japanese war conspired to prevent any progress. Although the society struggled on it was finally wound up in 1952. The book collection went to the Shanghai Library and most of the museum exhibits to the Shanghai Natural History Museum.

In 2006 the society was re-established in Hangzhou and transferred to Shanghai the following year as the Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai. The Journal has been resurrected and a growing library and museum opened to members and scholars.

In 2013 a chapter was established in Beijing as the Royal Asiatic Society in Beijing.

Presidents

North China Branch of the RAS 1857-1952

• 1857–1861: Rev Elijah Coleman Bridgman
• ?1859–: Thomas Taylor Meadows [2]
• 1864–: Harry Smith Parkes[3]
• c.1885: Herbert Allen Giles
• c.1910 Sir Pelham Warren [4]
• 1911: John Calvin Ferguson [5]
• 1913–1919: Sir Everard H. Fraser
• 1919–: Arthur Stanley
• 1935–1940: Arthur de Carle Sowerby [6]

RAS China in Shanghai 2007-

• 2007–2011: Peter Hibbard
• 2011-2013: Katy Gow
• 2013–: Nenad Djordjevic

References

1. "About Ras". Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
2. http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/pdf/abstracts/YUqiong.pdf
3. Smith, Carl. Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong. p. xxvii.
4. The Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, Straits. p. 905.
5. Netting, Lara. A Perpetual Fire: John C. Ferguson and His Quest for Chinese Art and Culture. p. 43.
6. "NATURALIST, AUTHOR, ARTIST, EXPLORER AND EDITOR AND AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN PRESIDENT: Arthur de Carle Sowerby 1885 - 1954: President of the North China Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society 1935 - 1940". JSTOR 23889812.

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Sándor Kőrösi Csoma [Kőrösi Csoma Sándor] [Alexander Csoma De Koros]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/21


Alexander Csoma de Kőrös
Born: Sándor Csoma, 27 March 1784[1], Kőrös, Grand Principality of Transylvania (today part of Covasna, Romania)
Died: 11 April 1842 (aged 58), Darjeeling, Colonial India
Occupation: Linguist, philologist, traveller

Sándor Csoma de Kőrös (Hungarian: [ˈʃaːndor ˈkøːrøʃi ˈt͡ʃomɒ]; born Sándor Csoma; 27 March 1784/8[1] – 11 April 1842) was a Hungarian philologist and Orientalist, author of the first Tibetan–English dictionary and grammar book. He was called Phyi-glin-gi-grwa-pa in Tibetan, meaning "the foreign pupil", and was declared a bosatsu or bodhisattva by the Japanese in 1933.[2] He was born in Kőrös, Grand Principality of Transylvania (today part of Covasna, Romania). His birth date is often given as 4 April, although this is actually his baptism day and the year of his birth is debated by some authors who put it at 1787 or 1788 rather than 1784. The Magyar ethnic group, the Székelys, to which he belonged believed that they were derived from a branch of Attila's Huns who had settled in Transylvania in the fifth century. Hoping to study the claim and to find the place of origin of the Székelys and the Magyars by studying language kinship, he set off to Asia in 1820 and spent his lifetime studying the Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy. Csoma de Kőrös is considered as the founder of Tibetology. He was said to have been able to read in seventeen languages. He died in Darjeeling while attempting to make a trip to Lhasa in 1842 and a memorial was erected in his honour by the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

Biography

Youth in Transylvania

Csoma de Kőrös was born into a poor Székely family,[3] the sixth child of András Csoma and his wife, Krisztina Getse (or Ilona Göcz?).[4] His name in English would be written Alexander Csoma of Koros and in Hungarian Kőrösi Csoma Sándor where Kőrösi means "of Koros" (i.e., a praedicatum of nobility) and alternate continental forms include "Sándor Csoma de Koros". His father served with the Székely Border Guards. His early schooling was at the local village school. In 1799, he went to Nagyenyed (present-day Aiud) to join the boarding school Bethlen Kollégium. The education program was free (gratistae) in return for manual labor. Here he was influenced by the professor Samuel Hegedüs. He left the school in 1807 and continued university studies, taking an interest in history, a subject made popular by Professor Ádám Herepei.[4] In 1815 he passed the public rigorosum in his studies at Bethlen Kollégium. A scholarship allowed him to continue to Göttingen, where he began to learn English under Professor Fiorillo. Csoma de Kőrős also came under the influence of Professor Johann Gottfried Eichhorn.

Studies in Göttingen


Bust presented by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to the Asiatic Society of Bengal

Between 1816 and 1818 he studied Oriental languages. In Göttingen, he was noted for being literate in thirteen languages including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and Romanian apart from his native Hungarian. In his Calcutta years he also mastered Bengali, Marathi and Sanskrit.[5] He returned to Transylvania in 1818. On 7 February 1819, Csoma met Hegedűs and informed him of his intent to learn Slavonic in Croatia. He left on foot for Agram and spent a few months there. He received the aid of one hundred florins from Michael de Kenderessy to help him in this journey.[4]

Eastward bound

The journey that Csoma undertook after leaving Croatia is reconstructed mainly from to a letter that Csoma wrote introducing himself to the British Captain Kennedy who detained him on entry at Sabathu on suspicion of being a spy. Csoma did not apply for an Imperial passport and obtained a Hungarian passport at Nagy Enyed and visited Bucharest. He had it signed by the General Commandant in Hermannstadt (today Sibiu) and went to Wallachia at the end of November 1819. He attempted to go to Constantinople but not finding the means he left Bucharest on 1 January 1820 and passed the Danube by Rustchuk and reached Sofia and then after five days to Philipopolis (now Plovdiv).[4]

Middle East, Central Asia


Route taken by Csoma


Statue of Alexander Csoma de Koros riding a yak

Csoma de Kőrös arrived in Edirne (Adrianopolis) and he wished to go from there to Constantinople but was forced by a plague outbreak to move to Enos. He left Enos on 7 February 1820 and reached Alexandria on a Greek ship. He reached on the last day of February but had to leave soon due to a plague epidemic. He boarded a Syrian ship to Larnaca in Cyprus and then took another ship to Tripoli and Latakia. From here he travelled on foot and reached Aleppo in Syria on 13 April. He left on 19 May, joining various caravans and by raft along the river going through Urfa, Mardin and Mosul to arrive in Baghdad on 22 July. He wrote to the British resident Mr. [Claudius] Rich and sought help in his travels. He was provided a European dress and money through a Hungarian friend Mr. Swoboda with whom he stayed.

Claudius James Rich (28 March 1787 – 5 October 1821) was a British business agent, traveller and antiquarian scholar.

Rich was born near Dijon 'of a good family', but passed his childhood at Bristol. Early on, he developed a gift for languages, becoming familiar not only with Latin and Greek but also with Hebrew, Syriac, Persian, Turkish and other Eastern tongues. In 1803, by the influence of friends, he was appointed a cadet in the East India Company's service. The following year he went to Constantinople, where, and at Smyrna, he stayed some time, perfecting himself in Turkish.

Proceeding to Alexandria as assistant to the British consul-general there, he devoted himself to Arabic and its various dialects, and made himself master of Eastern manners and usages. On leaving Egypt he travelled by land to the Persian Gulf, disguised as a Mamluk, visiting Damascus, and entering the great mosque undetected. At Bombay, which he reached in September 1807, he was the guest of Sir James Mackintosh, whose eldest daughter Mary he married on 22 January 1808, proceeding soon after to Baghdad as the British Resident.

There he began his investigations into the geography, history and antiquities of the district. He explored the remains of Babylon, and projected a geographical and statistical account of the pashalic of Bagdad. The results of his work at Babylon appeared first in the Vienna serial Mines de l'orient, and in 1839 in London under the title Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811.

In 1813-14 Rich spent some time in Europe, and on his return to Bagdad devoted himself to the study of the geography of Asia Minor, and collected much information in Syriac and Chaldean Christian convents concerning the Yezidis. During this period he made a second excursion to Babylon, and in 1820 undertook an extensive tour of the Chaldean villages in the north of present-day Iraq, alongside al-Munshi al Baghdady—from Bagdad north to Sulaimaniya, eastward to Sinna, then west to Nineveh, and thence down the Tigris to Bagdad. The narrative of this journey, which contained the first accurate knowledge (from scientific observation) regarding the topography and geography of the region, was published by his widow under the title, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the site of Ancient Nineveh, etc. (London, 1836).

During his time in Baghdad it is recorded that "Mr Rich was universally considered to be the most powerful man in Baghdad; and some even questioned whether the Pasha himself would not shape his conduct according to Mr Rich's suggestions and advice rather than as his own council might wish."

In 1820 Rich went to Basra, whence he made an excursion to Shiraz, visiting the ruins of Persepolis and the other remains in the neighborhood. In the same year he went to Mosul and the site of ancient Nineveh, where he was told of a large relief panel that had been found and soon broken up. When his account was published in 1836 it represented the first Western inkling of the Assyrian palace reliefs that were to be discovered in the 1840s; he also brought back two small fragments.

He was then appointed to an important office at Bombay by Mountstuart Elphinstone, when he was attacked by cholera, during a visit to Shiraz, while exerting himself to help the sick and allay the panic among the inhabitants. He died on 5 October 1821 and was buried in the Jân Numâ, one of the royal gardens at Shiraz, in which he was living at the time of his death. In 1826 his remains were exhumed and reburied in the Armenian cathedral of Jolfa in Esfahan.

His collections were purchased by the trustees of the British Museum, and consisted of 'about nine hundred volumes of manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and a great number in Chaldee and Syriac … highly rated by Mr. Colebrooke and Dr. Wilkins';[7] a large collection of coins, Greek and oriental; gems, and antiquities dug up at Babylon and Nineveh, including the first cuneiform inscriptions ever brought to Europe. Rich's portrait, presented by his widow Mary Mackintosh Rich, hangs in the students' room of the manuscript department in the British Museum.

-- Claudius Rich, by Wikipedia

He left Baghdad on 4 September and travelled with a caravan through Kermanshah and Hamadan and reached Tehran on 14 October 1820. He sought help from Henry Willock who made it possible for him to stay on for about four months.

Sir Henry Willock (1790 – 1858) was a lieutenant-colonel and the British Envoy to Persia from 1815-1826. He was the chairman of the East India Company (EIC) in 1844–45. Willock married Elizabeth Davis, daughter of EIC Director and orientalist Samuel Davis, in 1826.

-- Henry Willock, by Wikipedia

He left Tehran on 1 March 1821, leaving behind his passport and papers and changing from a European costume to a Persian one apart from writing notes in Hungarian which were to be passed on in the event that he died on his way to Bukhara. He reached Meshed on 18 April and due to the troubles in the area he could not continue until 20 October. He reached Bukhara on 18 November. He initially intended to spend the winter in Bukhara but fearing the Russian army he left after five days and joined a caravan that passed through Balk, Kulm, and Bamian to reach Kabul on 6 January 1822. He left Kabul on 19 January and headed towards Peshawar. On 26 January he met two French officers at Daka, Messrs. Allard and Ventura, who joined him to Lahore. He reached Lahore on 11 March and left on the 23rd passing through Amritsar, Jammu to reach Kashmir on 17 April. Finding company to travel with he left on 9 May to reach Leh on 9 June. Finding the route to Yarkand risky, he decided to return to Lahore and on the way to Kashmir, on 16 July 1822 he met William Moorcroft, the famous English explorer. He decided to stay on with Moorcroft and joined him to Leh. Here Moorcroft introduced Csoma to George Trebeck. He also lent Csoma a copy of Alphabetum Tibetanum by Agostino Antonio Giorgi. He also helped Moorcroft by translating a Russian letter (from Count Nesselrode Petersburgh dated 17 January 1820) addressed to Ranjeet Singh into Latin. Before Moorcroft left Leh, Csoma requested him that he wished to stay on with Trebeck in Leh. He then joined Trebeck back to Srinagar on 26 November. He stayed on here for five months and six days during which time he took an interest in the Tibetan language and discussed with Moorcroft an interest in examining the contents of the books found in the local monasteries.[4]

In Ladakh

Moorcroft recommended Csoma and wrote to obtain subsistence and support from the chief officer at Leh and the Lama of Yangla at Zanskar. Csoma left Kashmir on 2 May 1823 and reached Leh on 1 June 1823. From here he travelled to Yangla on the 9th and stayed in Zanskar from 20 June to 22 October 1824. At Zanskar he studied under a Lama. Towards winter he decided to move to Kullu and reached Subathu on 26 November. Here he was detained by Captain Kennedy who suspected him of being a spy. A letter of introduction and testimony from Moorcroft however clarified his position. It was not until May that the government response from Calcutta reached Subathu which absolved him of any suspicion from the British government.[4] On 6 June 1825, he left Subathu and reached Pukdal or Pukhtar in Zanskar. He returned to Subathu only on 17 January 1827 with some regret that his Lama instructor was not able to give enough time and attention. On his return to Subathu, Captain Kennedy wrote to Horace Hayman Wilson at the Asiatic Society of Bengal that he wished to discuss literary subjects and Tibet. He also noted that Csoma was not in need of money, having saved Rs. 150 from the Rs. 500 advanced to him by the Government two years ago. He also noted that Csoma ".. declines any attention that I would be most happy to show him, and he lives in the most retired manner."

During this period at Zanskar (he was the first European to visit the valley), he was immersed in an intense sixteen-month study of the Tibetan language and the Indo-Tibetan Buddhism at the core of its literature, with a local lama, Sangs-rgyas-phun-tshogs. He was one of the first Europeans to master the Tibetan language and read two of the great encyclopedias of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist literature the Kangyur (100 volumes) and the bsTan-'gyur (224 volumes) which contained translations of Buddhist books brought from India.[6] From May 1827 to October 1830 he resided in Kanum in Upper Bashahr in the Simla Hill States where he studied the collection of Tibetan manuscripts he had amassed in Ladakh, living on a monthly stipend of Rs. 50/- from the British. With his dictionary and grammar complete, Csoma went to Calcutta to oversee its publication.

In the course of his travels Csoma used various names modified for local use. These included Sikander (from Alexander) with the Beg or Mulla suffix and Rumi, Roome, modified into Tibetan as Rumpa as a prefix indicating he was from Rome. He sometimes signed as Secunder Roome.[7]

In Calcutta and Darjeeling


Memorial at Darjeeling

In 1831 Csoma joined the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. In 1833 he was unanimously elected as an honorary member of the Asiatic Society. In 1834 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society. From 1837 to 1841, he worked as Librarian of the Asiatic Society.[8] In 1842 he planned to travel to Lhasa, but contracted malaria while traveling in the Terai and died in Darjeeling.

Personal life

Csoma lived as an ascetic. He often slept on bare earth and ate a diet of bread, curd cheese, fruit and salad or boiled rice and tea.[9][10] He rarely ate meat and never alcohol.[11] Csoma was known to abstain from drinking water for days.[9] He could "live in the most trying circumstances in the most difficult of climate and terrain".[10] He never sought financial assistance for his work.[10]

Memorials and honours


Csoma's biographer, Theodore Duka, was an Army surgeon of Hungarian origin who worked in India

The grave of Csoma at Darjeeling was marked by a memorial by the Asiatic Society of Bengal. It is included in the list of monuments of historical maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India (Calcutta circle). A tablet was placed by the Hungarian government with the words of Count Istvan Szechenyi : "A poor lonely Hungarian, without applause or money but inspired with enthusiasm sought the Hungarian native country but in the end broke down under the burden".[2] A project has been started to restore the old royal palace (Kharkongma) of Zangla where Csoma de Kőrös lived and compiled his Tibetan–English dictionary.[12]

He was declared as a Bodhisattva (canonized as a Buddhist saint) on 22 February 1933 in Japan. A statue of him in lotus posture by the Hungarian sculptor Géza Csorba was placed on the occasion at the shrine in the Tokyo Buddhist University.[2][13] On his 200th birth anniversary in 1984, the Hungarian government released a postal stamp depicting him and his travel.[14] In 1992 a park in his memory was opened at Tar and inaugurated by the Dalai Lama.[15]

• Csoma was honoured by Hungary by the issuance of a postage stamps: on 1 July 1932.[16]
• On 30 March 1984, Csoma, the Master of Tibetan Philology, was depicted on a commemorative postage stamp by Hungary; in the background a map of Tibet can be seen.[17]

Works of Csoma de Kőrös

• Essay towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English. Prepared, with assistance of Bandé Sangs-rgyas Phuntshogs ... by Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, etc., Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1834.
• Analysis of the Dulva, part of the Kangyur, Asiatic Researches, Calcutta, 1836, vol. 20-1, pp. 41-93 (on line).
• Essay towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984.
• A Grammar of the Tibetan Language in English. Prepared under the patronage of the Government and the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Bengal., Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1834.
• Grammar of the Tibetan Language, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984.
• Sanskrit-Tibetan-English Vocabulary: being an edition and translation of the Mahāvyutpatti, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984.
• Collected works of Alexander Csoma de Körös, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984.

Works about Csoma de Kőrös

Books

• Duka, Theodore Life and works of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös: a biography compiled chiefly from hitherto unpublished data; with a brief notice of each of his unpublished works and essays, as well as of his still extant manuscripts. London: Trübner, 1885.
• Mukerjee, Hirendra Nath Hermit-hero from Hungary, Alexander Csoma de Koros, the great Tibetologist. New Delhi: Light & Life Publishers, 1981.
• Le Calloch, Bernard Alexandre Csoma de Kőrös. Paris: La nouvelle revue tibétaine, 1985.
• Fox, Edward The Hungarian Who Walked to Heaven (Alexander Csoma de Koros 1784-1842). Short Books, 2001.

Films

• A Guest of Life, a film by Tibor Szemző, 2006. IMDB
• Zangla - Path of Csoma, a film by Zoltán Bonta, 2008.

Scholarly Articles

• "New Discoveries about Alexander Csoma de Kőrös and the Buddhist Monasteries of Northern India" by Judith Galántha Herman (Montreal), Lectures and Papers in Hungarian Studies, no. 44.
• "Alexander Csoma de Kőrös the Hungarian Bodhisattva" by Dr. Ernest Hetenyi PDF of the full text

Catalogue of the Csoma de Kőrös Collection

• Collection of Tibetan mss. and xylographs of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös. József Terjék. Budapest : Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára, 1976.
• Original copies of the Tibetan and English Dictionary and Grammar of the Tibetan Language in English are available at the British Library.

Notes

1. Short bio and works (Hungarian)
2. Hetenyi, Ernest. "Alexander Csoma de Koros: The Hungarian Bodhisattva" (PDF). Bulletin of Tibetology. 9 (1): 34–41.
3. Parish register record of 4 April 1784 was noted by Duka, however others think this might be the date of baptism and the year 1787/1788 is also suggested by certain authors.
4. Duka, Theodore (1885). Life and Works of Alexander Csoma de Körös. London: Trubner & Co.
5. Fox, Edward (2006). The Hungarian Who Walked To Heaven: Alexander Csoma de Koros 1784-1842. London: Short Books.
6. Saint-Hilaire, J.-B. Buddha and his Religion. Twickenham: Tiger Books International, 1998 ISBN 1-85170-540-6 p19
7. Marczell, Peter (2005). "Csoma Kőrösi's Pseudonym". In Bray, John (ed.). Ladakhi histories. Local and Regional Perspectives. Brill. pp. 203–216.
8. Journal of The Asiatic Society, Vol.XLVII, No.1, Kolkata: The Asiatic Society, 2005, p.236
9. Ligeti, Lajos. (1984). Tibetan and Buddhist Studies: Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös. Akad. Kiadó. p. 151
10. Moses, Mohandas; Moulik, Achala. (2009). Dialogue of Civilizations: William Jones and the Orientalists. Aryan Books International. p. 344
11. Kubassek, János. (1999). Hungarian Hermit of the Himalaya: The Life of Sándor Kőrösi Csoma Against a Contemporary Historical and Geographical Backdrop. Hungarian Ancient History Research and Publishing. p. 51
12. Csoma's Room Project
13. Le Calloc'h, Bernard (1987). "Alexandre Csoma de Koros. Le Bodhisattva Hongrois". Revue de l'histoire des religions. 204 (4): 353–388. doi:10.3406/rhr.1987.2166.
14. "Stamps of Hungary". Archived from the original on 11 April 2013.
15. "Alexander Csoma de Kőrös Memorial Park".
16. colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/183698-Sándor_Kőrösi_Csoma_1784-1842_linguist-Personalities-Hungary
17. colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/175167-Sándor_Kőrösi_Csoma-People-Hungary

External links

• Csoma Archívum - Works of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös online (partly in English)
• Alexander Csoma de Kőrös- founder of Tibetan studies, and his legacy in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English (1834)

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William Marsden (orientalist)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/21

CHAPTER XV. THE SAME CONTINUED. THE HISTORY OF SAGAMONI BORCAN [SAKYA-MUNI] AND THE BEGINNING OF IDOLATRY.

Furthermore you must know that in the Island of Seilan [Ceylon] there is an exceeding high mountain; it rises right up so steep and precipitous that no one could ascend it, were it not that they have taken and fixed to it several great and massive iron chains, so disposed that by help of these men are able to mount to the top. And I tell you they say that on this mountain is the sepulchre of Adam our first parent; at least that is what the Saracens [Arab Muslims] say. But the Idolaters say that it is the sepulchre of SAGAMONI BORCAN, before whose time there were no idols. They hold him to have been the best of men, a great saint in fact, according to their fashion, and the first in whose name idols were made.[NOTE 1]

He was the son, as their story goes, of a great and wealthy king. And he was of such an holy temper that he would never listen to any worldly talk, nor would he consent to be king. And when the father saw that his son would not be king, nor yet take any part in affairs, he took it sorely to heart. And first he tried to tempt him with great promises, offering to crown him king, and to surrender all authority into his hands. The son, however, would none of his offers; so the father was in great trouble, and all the more that he had no other son but him, to whom he might bequeath the kingdom at his own death. So, after taking thought on the matter, the King caused a great palace to be built, and placed his son therein, and caused him to be waited on there by a number of maidens, the most beautiful that could anywhere be found. And he ordered them to divert themselves with the prince, night and day, and to sing and dance before him, so as to draw his heart towards worldly enjoyments. But 'twas all of no avail, for none of those maidens could ever tempt the king's son to any wantonness, and he only abode the firmer in his chastity, leading a most holy life, after their manner thereof. And I assure you he was so staid a youth that he had never gone out of the palace, and thus he had never seen a dead man, nor any one who was not hale and sound; for the father never allowed any man that was aged or infirm to come into his presence. It came to pass however one day that the young gentleman took a ride, and by the roadside he beheld a dead man. The sight dismayed him greatly, as he never had seen such a sight before. Incontinently he demanded of those who were with him what thing that was? and then they told him it was a dead man. "How, then," quoth the king's son, "do all men die?" "Yea, forsooth," said they. Whereupon the young gentleman said never a word, but rode on right pensively. And after he had ridden a good way he fell in with a very aged man who could no longer walk, and had not a tooth in his head, having lost all because of his great age. And when the king's son beheld this old man he asked what that might mean, and wherefore the man could not walk? Those who were with him replied that it was through old age the man could walk no longer, and had lost all his teeth. And so when the king's son had thus learned about the dead man and about the aged man, he turned back to his palace and said to himself that he would abide no longer in this evil world, but would go in search of Him Who dieth not, and Who had created him.[NOTE 2]

So what did he one night but take his departure from the palace privily, and betake himself to certain lofty and pathless mountains. And there he did abide, leading a life of great hardship and sanctity, and keeping great abstinence, just as if he had been a Christian. Indeed, an he had but been so, he would have been a great saint of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.[NOTE 3] And when he died they found his body and brought it to his father. And when the father saw dead before him that son whom he loved better than himself, he was near going distraught with sorrow. And he caused an image in the similitude of his son to be wrought in gold and precious stones, and caused all his people to adore it. And they all declared him to be a god; and so they still say. [NOTE 4]

They tell moreover that he hath died fourscore and four times. The first time he died as a man, and came to life again as an ox; and then he died as an ox and came to life again as a horse, and so on until he had died fourscore and four times; and every time he became some kind of animal. But when he died the eighty-fourth time they say he became a god. And they do hold him for the greatest of all their gods. And they tell that the aforesaid image of him was the first idol that the Idolaters ever had; and from that have originated all the other idols. And this befel in the Island of Seilan [Ceylon] in India.

The Idolaters come thither on pilgrimage from very long distances and with great devotion, just as Christians go to the shrine of Messer Saint James in Gallicia. And they maintain that the monument on the mountain is that of the king's son, according to the story I have been telling you; and that the teeth, and the hair, and the dish that are there were those of the same king's son, whose name was Sagamoni Borcan, or Sagamoni the Saint. But the Saracens also come thither on pilgrimage in great numbers, and they say that it is the sepulchre of Adam our first father, and that the teeth, and the hair, and the dish were those of Adam.[NOTE 5]

Whose they were in truth, God knoweth; howbeit, according to the Holy Scripture of our Church, the sepulchre of Adam is not in that part of the world.

Now it befel that the Great Kaan heard how on that mountain there was the sepulchre of our first father Adam, and that some of his hair and of his teeth, and the dish from which he used to eat, were still preserved there. So he thought he would get hold of them somehow or another, and despatched a great embassy for the purpose, in the year of Christ, 1284. The ambassadors, with a great company, travelled on by sea and by land until they arrived at the island of Seilan [Ceylon], and presented themselves before the king. And they were so urgent with him that they succeeded in getting two of the grinder teeth, which were passing great and thick; and they also got some of the hair, and the dish from which that personage used to eat, which is of a very beautiful green porphyry. And when the Great Kaan's ambassadors had attained the object for which they had come they were greatly rejoiced, and returned to their lord. And when they drew near to the great city of Cambaluc, where the Great Kaan was staying, they sent him word that they had brought back that for which he had sent them. On learning this the Great Kaan was passing glad, and ordered all the ecclesiastics and others to go forth to meet these reliques, which he was led to believe were those of Adam.

And why should I make a long story of it? In sooth, the whole population of Cambaluc went forth to meet those reliques, and the ecclesiastics took them over and carried them to the Great Kaan, who received them with great joy and reverence.[NOTE 6] And they find it written in their Scriptures that the virtue of that dish is such that if food for one man be put therein it shall become enough for five men: and the Great Kaan averred that he had proved the thing and found that it was really true.[NOTE 7]

So now you have heard how the Great Kaan came by those reliques; and a mighty great treasure it did cost him! The reliques being, according to the Idolaters, those of that king's son.

NOTE 1.—Sagamoni Borcan is, as [William] Marsden points out, SAKYA-MUNI, or Gautama-Buddha, with the affix BURKHAN, or "Divinity," which is used by the Mongols as the synonym of Buddha.

-- The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

William Marsden
FRS FSA
Marsden in 1815
First Secretary to the Admiralty
In office: 24 January 1804 – 24 June 1807
Preceded by: Sir Evan Nepean
Succeeded by: William Wellesley-Pole
Second Secretary to the Admiralty
In office: 3 March 1795 – 21 January 1804
Preceded by: John Ibbetson
Succeeded by: Benjamin Tucker
Personal details
Born: 16 November 1754, County Wicklow, Ireland
Died: 6 October 1836 (aged 81), Aldenham, England
Spouse(s): Elizabeth Wray ​(m. 1807)​
Education: Trinity College; Oxford University
Occupation: Orientalist, numismatist, linguist
Employer: East India Company

William Marsden FRS FSA (16 November 1754 – 6 October 1836) was an Irish orientalist, numismatist [coins], and linguist who served as Second, then First Secretary to the Admiralty during years of conflict with France [Napoleonic Wars].

Early life

Marsden was the son of a Dublin merchant. He was born in Verval, County Wicklow,[1] and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Upon obtaining a civil service appointment with the East India Company at sixteen years of age, he was sent to Benkulen, Sumatra, in 1771. He was promoted to the position of principal secretary to the government, and acquired a knowledge of the Malay language and the country. After returning to England in 1779, he was awarded the Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree by Oxford University in 1780[2] and published his History of Sumatra in 1783.[3]

Marsden was elected to membership in the Royal Society in 1783. He had been recommended by James Rennell, Edward Whitaker Gray, John Topham, Alexander Dalrymple, and Charles Blagden.[4]

Admiralty secretary

In 1795, Marsden was appointed second secretary to the admiralty, later rising to the position of first secretary with a salary of £4,000 per annum. It was in this capacity in 1805 that he received the news of victory in the Battle of Trafalgar and of the death of Admiral Horatio Nelson in the battle. As first secretary he suggested the Marsden squares system for arranging and grouping information over the oceans. He retired in 1807 with a lifetime pension of £1,500 per annum which he subsequently relinquished in 1831. In 1812, he published Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language.[5] This was followed by a translation of the Travels of Marco Polo in 1818.[3]

Marsden was a member of many learned societies, and treasurer[6] and vice-president of the Royal Society. In 1834 he presented his collection of oriental coins to the British Museum and his library of books and Oriental manuscripts to King's College London.[7] His other works are Catalogue of Dictionaries, Vocabularies, Grammars and Alphabets (1796), Numismata orientalia (London, 1823–1825), and several papers on Eastern topics in the Philosophical Transactions and the Archaeologia.[3]

Marsden's Numismata orientalia opened the field for Asian numismatics in Western languages, and was a "bible" for the subject, so much so that a new edition was planned in 1870s, but the field had grown so much by then that the new series was soon renamed as the International Numismata Orientalia.

He married Elizabeth, the daughter of his friend Sir Charles Wilkins FRS, but there was no issue to this marriage. He died on 6 October 1836 from an apoplexy attack and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. He left his estate to his kinsman Rev. Canon John Howard Marsden. Elizabeth subsequently married Colonel William Leake FRS on 17 September 1838.

Selected works

• 1784 – The history of Sumatra: containing an account of the government, laws, customs and manners of the native inhabitants, with a description of the natural productions, and a relation of the ancient political state of that island. London: Printed for the author. OCLC 3792458
• 1802 – "Observations on the language of Siwah; in a letter to the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Banks; by William Marsden, Esq., F.R.S." in The Journal of Frederick Horneman's Travels: From Cairo to Mourzouk, the Capital of the Kingdom of Fezzan, in Africa, by Friedrich Hornemann, James Rennell, William Marsden and William Young. London: G. and W. Nicol. OCLC 5165766
• 1796 – Catalogue of Dictionaries, Vocabularies, Grammars and Alphabets
• 1812 – Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language single edition, Dutch & French translation of the Grammar (C. P. J. Elout based on Marsden), Dutch-Malay & French-Malay Dictionary (C. P. J. Elout based on Marsden)
• 1818 – Travels of Marco Polo[8]
• 1823 – Numismata orientalia
• 1830 – Memoirs of a Malayan Family by 'La-uddı̄n Nakhoda Muda (translated by William Marsden). London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. OCLC 5347657
The standard author abbreviation Marsden is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[9]

Notes

1. "Wm. Marsden, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S.", The Gentleman's Magazine, VII (Feb. 1837), p. 212.
2. C.E. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography, London, Swan Sonnenschein (1906), p. 273.
3. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Marsden, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 766.
4. The Royal Society, Archives, Ref. No. EC/1782/10.
5. A copy of Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language PDF from Google.
6. "Proceedings of Learned Societies," Philosophical Magazine. Vol. XXV (1806). p. 267.
7. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespe ... rsden.aspx
8. "Review of The Travels of Marco Polo ... translated from the Italian, with notes, by William Marsden ..." The Quarterly Review. 21: 177–195. January 1819.
9. IPNI. Marsden.

References

• Marsden, William. (1838). Brief Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Marsden. London: Cox. OCLC 18750067
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Marsden, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 766.

External links

• Works by William Marsden at Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Works by William Marsden at Open Library
• Works by William Marsden at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Marsden at Internet Archive

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Kakusandha Buddha
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/21


Kakusandha
North-facing Kakusandha Buddha, Ananda Temple, Myanmar
Sanskrit: क्रकुच्छंद
Pāli: Kakusandha
Burmese: ကကုသန် ([ka̰kṵθàɰ̃])
Chinese: 拘留孙佛 (Pinyin: Jūliúsūn Fó)
Japanese: 拘留孫仏くるそん ぶつ (romaji: Kuruson Butsu)
Khmer: ព្រះពុទ្ធកកុសន្ធោ Preah Puth Kakosantho
Korean: 구류손불 (RR: Guryuson Bul)
Mongolian: Кракучандра
Sinhala: කකුසඳ බුදුන් වහන්සේ Kakusandha budun wahanse
Thai: พระกกุสันธพุทธเจ้า Phra Kakusantha Phutthachao
Tibetan: འཁོར་བ་འཇིག་; Wylie: 'khor ba 'jig; THL: khorwa jik
Vietnamese: Phật Câu Lưu Tôn
Information
Venerated by: Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana
Preceded by: Viśvabhū Buddha
Succeeded by: Kanakamuni Buddha

Kakusandha Buddha (Pāli), known as Krakucchaṃda in Sanskrit, is one of the ancient Buddhas whose biography is chronicled in chapter 22[1] of the Buddhavamsa, one of the books of the Pāli Canon.

According to Theravāda Buddhist tradition, Kakusandha is the twenty-fifth of the twenty-nine named Buddhas, the fourth of the Seven Buddhas of Antiquity, and the first of the five Buddhas of the present kalpa.[2]

The present kalpa is called the bhadrakalpa (Auspicious aeon). The five Buddhas of the present kalpa are:[3][4]

1. Kakusandha (the first Buddha of the bhadrakalpa)
2. Koṇāgamana (the second Buddha of the bhadrakalpa)
3. Kassapa (the third Buddha of the bhadrakalpa)
4. Gautama (the fourth and present Buddha of the bhadrakalpa)
5. Maitreya (the fifth and future Buddha of the bhadrakalpa)

Life

Kakusandha Buddha was born in Khemavati Park in Khemavati according to the Theravada tradition.[1] Khemavati is now known as Gotihawa, and it is located about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) southeast of Kapilavastu, in Kapilvastu District, in the Lumbini Zone of southern Nepal.[5] His father was Aggidatta,a chaplain of the king Khemankara of Khemavati. His mother was Visakha. His wife was Virochamana (also known as Rocani); he had a son, Uttara (son of Kakusandha). Asoka visited Gotihawa, Nepal when he visited Lumbini, Nepal and installed a stone pillar and inscribed his visit in the pillar. There is also a stupa in Gothihawa. Therefore, it is generally accepted due to the pillar that stupa is associated with the nirvana of Kakusandha Buddha.

Kakusandha lived for four thousand years in the household in three palaces: Ruci, Suruci and Vaddhana (or Rativaddhana). At the age of four thousand, he renounced the worldly life while riding on a chariot. He practised austerities for eight months.[6] Before attaining enlightenment, he had accepted some milk-rice from the daughter of the Brahmin Vajirindha of the village Suchirindha, as well as grass for his seat from the yavapalaka Subhadda. He attained enlightenment under a sirisa tree [Albizia lebbeck], then delivered his first sermon to the assembly of eighty-four thousand monks in a park near Makila.

Kakusandha performed the twin miracle under a sala tree, at the gates of Kannakujja. Among his converts was a fierce yaksha named Naradeva. Kakusandha kept the fast-day (uposatha) every year.

His chief disciples were Vidhura and Sanjiva among the monks, and Sama and Champa among the nuns. His personal attendant was Buddhija. Acchuta and Samana among the men, and Nanda and Sunanda among the women were his chief lay-supporters. Acchuta built a monastery for Kakusandha Buddha on the same site, which was later chosen by Anathapindika for Jetavana Arama for Gautama Buddha.

Anathapindika (Pali: Anāthapiṇḍika; Sanskrit: Anāthapiṇḍada); born Sudatta, was a wealthy merchant and banker, believed to have been the wealthiest merchant in Savatthi in the time of Gautama Buddha. He is considered to have been the chief male patron of the Buddha. Anathapindika founded the Jetavana Monastery in Savatthi, considered one of the two most important temples in the time of the historic Buddha, the other being Migāramātupāsāda.

Jetavana (lit. 'Jeta's grove') was one of the most famous of the Buddhist monasteries or viharas in India (present-day Uttar Pradesh). It was the second vihara donated to Gautama Buddha after the Venuvana in Rajgir. The monastery was given to him by his chief male lay disciple, Anathapindika.

Jetavana is located just outside the old city of Savatthi. There was also an important vihara named Jetavana in Sri Lanka.

Jetavana was the place where the Buddha gave the majority of his teachings and discourses, having stayed at Jetavana nineteen out of 45 vassas, more than in any other monastery. It is said that after the Migāramātupāsāda, a second vihara erected at Pubbarama close to Savatthi was built by the Buddha's chief female lay disciple, Visakha, the Buddha would dwell alternately between Jetavana and Migāramātupāsāda, often spending the day in one and the night in the other (SNA.i.336).

-- Jetavana, by Wikipedia

Anathapindika was born into a wealthy merchant family in Savatthi with the birth name Sudatta, and was a relative of Subhūti, one of the Buddha's principal disciples. He received the nickname Anathapindika, literally "one who gives alms (piṇḍa) to the unprotected (anātha)", due to his reputation of loving to give to those in need. Anathapindika met the Buddha while on a business trip in Rājagaha after being told about him by his brother-in-law. He reached sotapanna, a stage of enlightenment, after listening to the Buddha preach. Following the encounter, Anathapindika became a devoted lay follower and purchased land to build the Jetavana Monastery from the prince of Kosala by covering the park grounds with coins. After building Jetavana Monastery, Anathapindika continued to generously support the Buddha and his monastic community throughout his life and became known as the Buddha's greatest patron and benefactor along with his female counterpart, Visakha.

As chief patron, Anathapindika fed large numbers of the Buddha's monks daily and regularly maintained and supplied Jetavana Monastery, as well as served as one of the Buddha's primary aides in dealing with the general public. He is known as the male lay disciple of the Buddha who was foremost in generosity. Anathapindika is frequently referred to as Anathapindika-setthi (setthi meaning "wealthy person" or "millionaire"), and is sometimes referred to as Mahā Anāthapindika to distinguish him from Cūla Anāthapindika, another disciple of the Buddha.

-- Anathapindika, by Wikipedia

According to the Samyutta Nikaya (ii.194), the Vepulla peak of Rajgir was then called Pachinvamsa; and the people of the region Tivara.

Kakusandha's body was forty cubits in height [18" x 40 = 60 feet], and he died at the age of forty thousand years in Khemavati. The stupa erected over his relics was one league high [the distance a Roman person could walk in an hour = 1.5 miles = 7,920 feet].[6]

The Mile-High Illinois, Illinois Sky City, or simply The Illinois is a visionary skyscraper that is proposed to be over 1 mile (1,600 m) high, conceived and described by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in his 1957 book, A Testament. The design, intended to be built in Chicago, included 528 stories, with a gross area of 18,460,000 square feet (1,715,000 m2). Wright stated that there would be parking for 15,000 cars and 100 helicopters.

If built, it would top the list of the tallest buildings in the world by far, being more than four times the height of the Empire State Building, and twice as tall as the world's current tallest building, the Burj Khalifa and about 730 meters taller than Jeddah Tower, both designed by Adrian Smith and which designs are said to have been inspired by that of The Illinois.

-- The Illinois, by Wikipedia

In this manner Buddha Kakusandha attained Parinibbana in Khema Park. In that very Park, as has been said before, a cetiya was erected over the relics of Buddha Kakusandha; it was exactly one yojana high [14 km. = 8.5 miles = 44,880 feet high].

-- Chronicle of Twenty-four Buddhas [Excerpt], by Mingun Sayadaw

Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. Its elevation (snow height) of 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft) was most recently established in 2020 by the Nepali and Chinese authorities.

-- Mount Everest, by Wikipedia

The bodhisattva who was to become Siddhartha Gautama was born as King Khema during the time of Kakusandha. Kakusandha was the Buddha who foretold that King Khema, who offered him alms with robes and medicines, would become the Gautama Buddha in the future.[7]

See also

• Bhadrakalpikasutra

References

1. Vicittasarabivamsa, U (1992). "Chapter 22: Kakusandha Buddhavamsa". In Ko Lay, U; Tin Lwin, U (eds.). The great chronicle of Buddhas, Volume One, Part Two (1st ed.). Yangon, Myanmar: Ti=Ni Publishing Center. pp. 274–80.
2. Gärtner, Uta; Jens Lorenz (1994). Tradition and modernity in Myanmar. LIT Verlag. p. 281. ISBN 978-3-8258-2186-9.
3. Buswell Jr., RE; Lopez Jr., DS (2014). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (1st ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-691-15786-3.
4. "Chapter 36: The Buddhas in the three periods of time". Buddhism in a Nutshell Archives. Hong Kong: Buddhistdoor International. Retrieved 2014-12-21.
5. Chan Khoon San, Buddhist Pilgrimage Archived 2015-03-25 at the Wayback Machine, Subang Jaya Buddhist Association, Subang Jaya, Malaysia, 2001, page 51.
6. Vipassana.info, Pali Proper Names Dictionary: Kakusandha
7. Prophecies of Kakusandha Buddha, Konagamana Buddha and Kassapa Buddha Archived 2011-07-13 at the Wayback Machine

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Pāli Canon
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/21


Standard edition of the Thai Pali Canon

Pāli Canon

1. Vinaya Piṭaka
1. Suttavibhaṅga
2. Khandhaka
3. Parivāra
2. Sutta Piṭaka
1. Dīgha Nikāya
2. Majjhima Nikāya
3. Saṃyutta Nikāya
4. Aṅguttara Nikāya
5. Khuddaka Nikāya
3. Abhidhamma Piṭaka
1. Dhammasaṅgaṇī
2. Vibhaṅga
3. Dhātukathā
4. Puggalapaññatti
5. Kathāvatthu
6. Yamaka
7. Paṭṭhāna

The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language.[1] It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon.[2][3] It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school.[4]

During the First Buddhist Council, thirty years after the parinibbana of Gautama Buddha in Rajgir, Ananda recited the Sutta Pitaka, and Upali recited the Vinaya Pitaka. The Arhats present accepted the recitations and henceforth the teachings were preserved orally by the Sangha. The Tipitaka that was transmitted to Sri Lanka during the reign of King Asoka were initially preserved orally and were later written down during the Fourth Buddhist Council in 29 BCE, approximately 454 years after the death of Gautama Buddha.[a][6] So when we say that the texts were “spoken by the Buddha”, we mean it in this non-literal sense.[7]

As we learn from the well-known references to the existence of the bhanaka tradition existing until later periods and from several other sources, oral tradition continued to exist side by side with written scriptures for many centuries to come. This, the so-called writing down of the scriptures[8] was only the beginning of a new form of tradition, and the innovation was probably opposed by the more conservative monks. As with many other innovations, it was only after some time that it was generally accepted. Therefore, it was much later that the records of this event were transformed into an account of a "council" (sangayana or sangiti) which was held under the patronage of King Vattagamani.

Textual fragments of similar teachings have been found in the agama of other major Buddhist schools in India. They were however written down in various Prakrits other than Pali as well as Sanskrit. Some of those were later translated into Chinese (earliest dating to the late 4th century CE). The surviving Sri Lankan version is the most complete,[9] but one that was extensively redacted about 1,000 years after Buddha's death, in the 5th or 6th century CE.[10] The earliest textual fragments of canonical Pali were found in the Pyu city-states in Burma dating only to the mid 5th to mid 6th century CE.[11]

The Pāli Canon falls into three general categories, called pitaka (from Pali piṭaka, meaning "basket", referring to the receptacles in which the palm-leaf manuscripts were kept).[12] Because of this, the canon is traditionally known as the Tipiṭaka ("three baskets"). The three pitakas are as follows:

1. Vinaya Piṭaka ("Discipline Basket"), dealing with rules or discipline of the sangha;[12][9]

2. Sutta Piṭaka (Sutra/Sayings Basket), discourses and sermons of Buddha, some religious poetry and is the largest basket;[12]

3. Abhidhamma Piṭaka, treatises that elaborate Buddhist doctrines, particularly about mind, also called the "systematic philosophy" basket.

The Vinaya Pitaka and the Sutta Pitaka are remarkably similar to the works of the early Buddhist schools, often termed Early Buddhist Texts. The Abhidhamma Pitaka, however, is a strictly Theravada collection and has little in common with the Abhidhamma works recognized by other Buddhist schools.[13]

The Canon in the tradition


In pre-modern times the Pali Canon was not published in book form, but written on thin slices of wood (Palm-leaf manuscript or Bamboo). The leaves are kept on top of each other by thin sticks and the scripture is covered in cloth and kept in a box.

The Canon is traditionally described by the Theravada as the Word of the Buddha (buddhavacana), though this is not intended in a literal sense, since it includes teachings by disciples.[14]

The traditional Theravādin (Mahavihārin) interpretation of the Pali Canon is given in a series of commentaries covering nearly the whole Canon, compiled by Buddhaghosa (fl. 4th–5th century CE) and later monks, mainly on the basis of earlier materials now lost. Subcommentaries have been written afterward, commenting further on the Canon and its commentaries. The traditional Theravādin interpretation is summarized in Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga.[15]

An official view is given by a spokesman for the Buddha Sasana Council of Burma:[16] the Canon contains everything needed to show the path to nirvāna; the commentaries and subcommentaries sometimes include much speculative matter, but are faithful to its teachings and often give very illuminating illustrations. In Sri Lanka and Thailand, "official" Buddhism has in large part adopted the interpretations of Western scholars.[17]

Although the Canon has existed in written form for two millennia, its earlier oral nature has not been forgotten in actual Buddhist practice within the tradition: memorization and recitation remain common. Among frequently recited texts are the Paritta. Even lay people usually know at least a few short texts by heart and recite them regularly; this is considered a form of meditation, at least if one understands the meaning. Monks are of course expected to know quite a bit more (see Dhammapada below for an example). A Burmese monk named Vicittasara even learned the entire Canon by heart for the Sixth Council (again according to the usual Theravada numbering).[18][19]

The relation of the scriptures to Buddhism as it actually exists among ordinary monks and lay people is, as with other major religious traditions, problematic: the evidence suggests that only parts of the Canon ever enjoyed wide currency, and that non-canonical works were sometimes very much more widely used; the details varied from place to place.[20] Rupert Gethin suggests that the whole of Buddhist history may be regarded as a working out of the implications of the early scriptures.[21]

Origins

According to a late part of the Pali Canon, the Buddha taught the three pitakas.[22] It is traditionally believed by Theravadins that most of the Pali Canon originated from the Buddha and his immediate disciples. According to the scriptures, a council was held shortly after the Buddha's passing to collect and preserve his teachings. The Theravada tradition states that it was recited orally from the 5th century BCE to the first century BCE, when it was written down.[23] The memorization was enforced by regular communal recitations. The tradition holds that only a few later additions were made. The Theravādin pitakas were first written down in Sri Lanka in the Alu Viharaya Temple no earlier than 29–17 BCE.[24]

The geographic setting of identifiable texts within the Canon generally corresponds to locations in the Ganges region of northeastern India, including the kingdoms of Kosala, Kasi, Vajji, and Magadha.[25] While Theravada tradition has generally regarded Pali as being synonymous with the language of the kingdom of Magadhi as spoken by the Buddha, linguists have identified Pali as being more closely related to other prakrit languages of western India, and found substantial incompatibilities with the few preserved examples of Magadhi and other north-eastern prakrit languages.[26] Linguistic research suggests that the teachings of the Buddha may have been recorded in an eastern India language originally, but were transposed into the west Indian precursor of Pali sometime before the Asokan era.[25]

Much of the material in the Canon is not specifically Theravādin, but is instead the collection of teachings that this school preserved from the early, non-sectarian body of teachings. According to Peter Harvey, it contains material which is at odds with later Theravādin orthodoxy. He states that "the Theravādins, then, may have added texts to the Canon for some time, but they do not appear to have tampered with what they already had from an earlier period."[27] A variety of factors suggest that the early Sri Lankan Buddhists regarded canonical literature as such and transmitted it conservatively.[28]

Theravada tradition generally treats the Canon as a whole as originating with the Buddha and his immediate disciples (with the exception certain, generally Abhidhamma texts, that explicitly refer to events long after his death). Scholars differ in their views regarding the ultimate origin of the Pali Canon, but generally believe that the Canon includes several strata of relatively early and late texts, but with little consensus regarding the relative dating of different sections of the Canon or which texts belong to which era.[25]

Authorship

Authorship according to Theravadins

Prayudh Payutto argues that the Pali Canon represents the teachings of the Buddha essentially unchanged apart from minor modifications. He argues that it also incorporates teachings that precede the Buddha, and that the later teachings were memorized by the Buddha's followers while he was still alive. His thesis is based on study of the processes of the first great council, and the methods for memorization used by the monks, which started during the Buddha's lifetime. It's also based on the capability of a few monks, to this day, to memorize the entire canon.[29]

Bhikkhu Sujato and Bhikkhu Brahmali argue that it is likely that much of the Pali Canon dates back to the time period of the Buddha. They base this on many lines of evidence including the technology described in the canon (apart from the obviously later texts), which matches the technology of his day which was in rapid development, that it doesn't include back written prophecies of the great Buddhist ruler King Ashoka (which Mahayana texts often do) suggesting that it predates his time, that in its descriptions of the political geography it presents India at the time of Buddha, which changed soon after his death, that it has no mention of places in South India, which would have been well known to Indians not long after Buddha's death and various other lines of evidence dating the material back to his time.[30]

Authorship according to academic scholars

The views of scholars concerning the authorship of the Pali Canon can be grouped into three categories:

1. Attribution to the Buddha himself and his early followers
2. Attribution to the period of pre-sectarian Buddhism
3. Agnosticism

Scholars have both supported and opposed the various existing views.

Views concerning authorship of the Buddha himself

Several scholars of early Buddhism argue that the nucleus of the Buddhist teachings in the Pali Canon may derive from Gautama Buddha himself, but that part of it also was developed after the Buddha by his early followers. Richard Gombrich says that the main preachings of the Buddha (as in the Vinaya and Sutta Pitaka) are coherent and cogent, and must be the work of a single person: the Buddha himself, not a committee of followers after his death.[ b][32]

Other scholars are more cautious, and attribute part of the Pali canon to the Buddha's early followers. Peter Harvey[33] also states that "much" of the Pali Canon must derive from the Buddha's teaching, but also states that "parts of the Pali Canon clearly originated after the time of the Buddha."[c] A.K. Warder has stated that there is no evidence to suggest that the shared teaching of the early schools was formulated by anyone else than the Buddha and his immediate followers.[d] J.W. de Jong has said it would be "hypocritical" to assert that we can say nothing about the teachings of earliest Buddhism, arguing that "the basic ideas of Buddhism found in the canonical writings could very well have been proclaimed by him [the Buddha], transmitted and developed by his disciples and, finally, codified in fixed formulas."[35] Alex Wynne has said that some texts in the Pali Canon may go back to the very beginning of Buddhism, which perhaps include the substance of the Buddha's teaching, and in some cases, maybe even his words.[e]. He suggests that the canon was composed early on soon after Buddha's paranirvana, but after a period of free improvisation, and then the core teachings were preserved nearly verbatim by memory.[36] Hajime Nakamura writes that while nothing can be definitively attributed to Gautama as a historical figure, some sayings or phrases must derive from him.[37]

Views concerning authorship in the period of pre-sectarian Buddhism

Most scholars do agree that there was a rough body of sacred literature that a relatively early community maintained and transmitted.[38][f]

Much of the Pali Canon is found also in the scriptures of other early schools of Buddhism, parts of whose versions are preserved, mainly in Chinese. Many scholars have argued that this shared material can be attributed to the period of Pre-sectarian Buddhism.[citation needed] This is the period before the early schools separated in about the fourth or third century BCE.

Views concerning agnosticism

Some scholars see the Pali Canon as expanding and changing from an unknown nucleus.[39] Arguments given for an agnostic attitude include that the evidence for the Buddha's teachings dates from (long) after his death.

Some scholars of later Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism say that little or nothing goes back to the Buddha. Ronald Davidson[40] has little confidence that much, if any, of surviving Buddhist scripture is actually the word of the historical Buddha.[38] Geoffrey Samuel[41] says the Pali Canon largely derives from the work of Buddhaghosa and his colleagues in the 5th century CE.[42] Gregory Schopen argues[43] that it is not until the 5th to 6th centuries CE that we can know anything definite about the contents of the Canon. This position was criticized by A. Wynne.[5]

Authorship of the Abhidhamma Pitaka

Western scholarship suggests that the Abhidhamma Pitaka was likely began to be composed around 300 BCE, but may have drawn on an earlier tradition of lists and rubrics known as 'matrika'.[12][44] Traditional accounts include it among the texts recited at the First Buddhist Council and attribute differences in form and style to its composition by Sariputra.[45][46]

The earliest books of the Pali Canon

Different positions have been taken on what the earliest books of the Canon are. The majority of Western scholars consider the earliest identifiable stratum to be mainly prose works,[47] the Vinaya (excluding the Parivāra)[48] and the first four nikāyas of the Sutta Pitaka,[49][50] and perhaps also some short verse works[51] such as the Suttanipata.[48] However, some scholars, particularly in Japan, maintain that the Suttanipāta is the earliest of all Buddhist scriptures, followed by the Itivuttaka and Udāna.[52] However, some of the developments in teachings may only reflect changes in teaching that the Buddha himself adopted, during the 45 years that the Buddha was teaching.[g]

Scholars generally agree that the early books include some later additions.[53] Aspects of these late additions are or may be from a much earlier period.[54][55][56] Other aspects of the Pali Canon, such as the information about society and South Asian history, are in doubt because the Pali Canon was extensively redacted in the 5th- or 6th-century CE, nearly a thousand years after the death of the Buddha.[10] Further, this redacted Pali Canon of Sri Lanka itself mentions that the compilation had previously been redacted towards the end of 1st-century BCE. According to the Early Buddhism scholar Lars Fogelin, the Pali Canon of Sri Lanka is a modified Canon and "there is no good reason to assume that Sri Lankan Buddhism resembles Early Buddhism in the mainland, and there are numerous reasons to argue that it does not."[57]

One of the edicts of Ashoka, the 'Calcutta-Bairat edict', lists several works from the canon which he considers advantageous. According to Alexander Wynne:

The general consensus seems to be that what Asoka calls Munigatha correspond to the Munisutta (Sn 207-21), Moneyasute is probably the second half of the Nalakasutta (Sn 699-723), and Upatisapasine may correspond to the Sariputtasutta (Sn 955-975). The identification of most of the other titles is less certain, but Schmithausen, following Oldenberg before him, identifies what Asoka calls the Laghulovada with part of a prose text in the Majjhima Nikaya, the Ambalatthika-Rahulovada Sutta (M no.61).[58]

This seems to be evidence which indicates that some of these texts were already fixed by the time of the reign of Ashoka (304–232 BCE), which means that some of the texts carried by the Buddhist missionaries at this time might also have been fixed.[58]

According to the Sri Lankan Mahavamsa, the Pali Canon was written down in the reign of King Vattagāmini (Vaṭṭagāmiṇi) (1st century BCE) in Sri Lanka, at the Fourth Buddhist council. Most scholars hold that little if anything was added to the Canon after this,[59][60][61] though Schopen questions this.

Texts

Manuscripts


Burmese-Pali manuscript copy of the Buddhist text Mahaniddesa, showing three different types of Burmese script, (top) medium square, (centre) round and (bottom) outline round in red lacquer from the inside of one of the gilded covers

The climate of Theravāda countries is not conducive to the survival of manuscripts. Apart from brief quotations in inscriptions and a two-page fragment from the eighth or ninth century found in Nepal, the oldest manuscripts known are from late in the fifteenth century,[62] and there is not very much from before the eighteenth.[63]

Printed editions and digitized editions

The first complete printed edition of the Canon was published in Burma in 1900, in 38 volumes.[64] The following editions of the Pali text of the Canon are readily available in the West:

• Pali Text Society edition (in Roman script), published 1877–1927 (a few volumes subsequently replaced by new editions), in 57 volumes (including indexes).[63]
o The Pali scriptures and some Pali commentaries were digitized as an MS-DOS/extended ASCII compatible database through cooperation between the Dhammakaya Foundation and the Pali Text Society in 1996 as PALITEXT version 1.0: CD-ROM Database of the Entire Buddhist Pali Canon ISBN 978-974-8235-87-5.[65]
• Thai Tipitaka in Thai script, published during the reign of Rama VII (1925–35), 45 volumes, with fewer variant readings than PTS;[66]
o BUDSIR on Internet[67] free with login; and electronic transcript by BUDSIR: Buddhist scriptures information retrieval,[68] CD-ROM and online, both requiring payment.
• Sixth Council Tipiṭaka, Rangoon (1954–56), 40 volumes in Burmese script; with fewer variant readings than the Thai edition;[69]
o electronic transcript by Vipāssana Research Institute available online[70] in searchable database free of charge, or on CD-ROM (p&p only) from the institute.[71]
o Another transcript of this edition, produced under the patronage of the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand, World Tipitaka Edition, 2005, 40 volumes, published by the Dhamma Society Fund,[72] claims to include the full extent of changes made at the Sixth Council, and therefore reflect the results of the council more accurately than some existing Sixth Council editions. Available for viewing online (registration required) at Tipiṭaka Quotation WebService.[73]
• Sinhalese (Buddha Jayanti) edition, (1957–1993?), 58 volumes including parallel Sinhalese translations, searchable, free of charge (not yet fully proofread.) Available at Journal of Buddhist Ethics.[74] The only accurate version of the Sri Lankan text available, in individual page images. Cannot be searched though.[75]
o Transcript in BudhgayaNews Pali Canon.[76] In this version it is easy to search for individual words across all 16,000+ pages at once and view the contexts in which they appear.
• Cambodian Tipiṭaka in Khmer script. Edited and published by the Institut Bouddhique in Phnom Penh (1931–69).[77]
• The Complete Collection of Chinese Pattra Scripture as preserved by the Dai people.[78]

Translations

Pali Canon in English Translation, 1895-, in progress, 43 volumes so far, Pali Text Society, Bristol; for details of these and other translations of individual books see the separate articles. In 1994, the then President of the Pali Text Society stated that most of these translations were unsatisfactory.[79] Another former President said in 2003 that most of the translations were done very badly.[31] The style of many translations from the Canon has been criticized[80] as "Buddhist Hybrid English", a term invented by Paul Griffiths for translations from Sanskrit. He describes it as "deplorable", "comprehensible only to the initiate, written by and for Buddhologists".[81]

Selections: see List of Pali Canon anthologies.

A translation by Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi of the Majjhima Nikaya was published by Wisdom Publications in 1995.

Translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi of the Samyutta Nikaya and the Anguttara Nikaya were published by Wisdom Publications in 2003 and 2012, respectively.

In 2018, new translations of the entirety of the five Nikayas were made freely available on the website suttacentral by the Australian Bhikkhu Sujato, the translations were also released into the Public Domain.

A Japanese translation of the Canon, edited by Takakusu Junjiro, was published in 65 volumes from 1935 to 1941 as The Mahātripiṭaka of the Southern Tradition (南伝大蔵経 Nanden daizōkyō).

A Chinese translation of the above-mentioned Japanese translation was undertaken between 1990-1998 and thereafter printed under the patronage of Kaoshiung's Yuan Heng Temple.

Contents of the Canon

As noted above, the Canon consists of three pitakas.

• Vinaya Pitaka (vinayapiṭaka)
• Sutta Pitaka or Suttanta Pitaka
• Abhidhamma Pitaka

Details are given below. For more complete information, see standard references on Pali literature.[82][83]

Vinaya Pitaka

The first category, the Vinaya Pitaka, is mostly concerned with the rules of the sangha, both monks and nuns. The rules are preceded by stories telling how the Buddha came to lay them down, and followed by explanations and analysis. According to the stories, the rules were devised on an ad hoc basis as the Buddha encountered various behavioral problems or disputes among his followers. This pitaka can be divided into three parts:

• Suttavibhanga (-vibhaṅga) Commentary on the Patimokkha, a basic code of rules for monks and nuns that is not as such included in the Canon. The monks' rules are dealt with first, followed by those of the nuns' rules not already covered.
• Khandhaka Other rules grouped by topic in 22 chapters.
• Parivara (parivāra) Analysis of the rules from various points of view.

Sutta Pitaka

The second category is the Sutta Pitaka (literally "basket of threads", or of "the well spoken"; Sanskrit: Sutra Pitaka, following the former meaning) which consists primarily of accounts of the Buddha's teachings. The Sutta Pitaka has five subdivisions, or nikayas:

• Digha Nikaya (dīghanikāya) 34 long discourses.[84] Joy Manné argues[85] that this book was particularly intended to make converts, with its high proportion of debates and devotional material.
• Majjhima Nikaya 152 medium-length discourses.[84] Manné argues[85] that this book was particularly intended to give a solid grounding in the teaching to converts, with a high proportion of sermons and consultations.
• Samyutta Nikaya (saṃyutta-) Thousands of short discourses in fifty-odd groups by subject, person etc. Bhikkhu Bodhi, in his translation, says this nikaya has the most detailed explanations of doctrine.
• Anguttara Nikaya (aṅguttara-) Thousands of short discourses arranged numerically from ones to elevens. It contains more elementary teaching for ordinary people than the preceding three.
• Khuddaka Nikaya A miscellaneous collection of works in prose or verse.

Abhidhamma Pitaka

The third category, the Abhidhamma Pitaka (literally "beyond the dhamma", "higher dhamma" or "special dhamma", Sanskrit: Abhidharma Pitaka), is a collection of texts which give a scholastic explanation of Buddhist doctrines particularly about mind, and sometimes referred to as the "systematic philosophy" basket.[12][44] There are seven books in the Abhidhamma Pitaka:

• Dhammasangani (-saṅgaṇi or -saṅgaṇī) Enumeration, definition and classification of dhammas
• Vibhanga (vibhaṅga) Analysis of 18 topics by various methods, including those of the Dhammasangani
• Dhatukatha (dhātukathā) Deals with interrelations between ideas from the previous two books
• Puggalapannatti (-paññatti) Explanations of types of person, arranged numerically in lists from ones to tens
• Kathavatthu (kathā-) Over 200 debates on points of doctrine
• Yamaka Applies to 10 topics a procedure involving converse questions (e.g. Is X Y? Is Y X?)
• Patthana (paṭṭhāna) Analysis of 24 types of condition[86]

The traditional position is that abhidhamma refers to the absolute teaching, while the suttas are adapted to the hearer. Most scholars describe the abhidhamma as an attempt to systematize the teachings of the suttas:[86][87] Cousins says that where the suttas think in terms of sequences or processes the abhidhamma thinks in terms of specific events or occasions.[88]

Use of Brahmanical Language

The Pali Canon uses many Brahmanical terminology and concepts. For example, the Sundarika Sutta includes an analogy, quoted in several other places in the Canon, where the Buddha describes the Agnihotra as the foremost sacrifice and the Gayatri mantra as the foremost meter:

aggihuttamukhā yaññā sāvittī chandaso mukham.

— Sacrifices have the agnihotra as foremost; of meter the foremost is the Sāvitrī.[89]

These Brahmanical motives are sometimes introduced in order to "establish a link with the deeds and beliefs of Brahmins", referencing "shared ideas" that were part of the culture of ancient India.[90] In many other instances, they are introduced in order to establish unfavorable comparisons with Buddhist teachings or practices- after identifying the fire sacrifice as the foremost of the Brahminist sacrifices, the Buddha goes on to explain how it is surpassed by the kindling of "inner light" that he practices as an arahant.[91]

Comparison with other Buddhist canons

See also: Āgama (Buddhism)

The other two main Buddhist canons in use in the present day are the Chinese Buddhist Canon and the Tibetan Kangyur.

The standard modern edition of the Chinese Buddhist Canon is the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, with a hundred major divisions, totaling over 80,000 pages. This includes Vinayas for the Dharmaguptaka, Sarvāstivāda, Mahīśāsaka, and Mahāsaṃghika schools. It also includes the four major Āgamas, which are analogous to the Nikayas of the Pali Canon. Namely, they are the Saṃyukta Āgama, Madhyama Āgama, Dīrgha Āgama, and Ekottara Āgama. Also included are the Dhammapada, the Udāna, the Itivuttaka, and Milindapanha. There are also additional texts, including early histories, that are preserved from the early Buddhist schools but not found in Pali. The canon contains voluminous works of Abhidharma, especially from the Sarvāstivāda school. The Indian works preserved in the Chinese Canon were translated mostly from Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit, or from regional Prakrits. The Chinese generally referred to these simply as "Sanskrit" (Ch. 梵語, Fànyǔ). The first woodblock printing of the entire Chinese Buddhist Canon was done during the Song dynasty by imperial order in China in CE 971; the earliest dated printed Buddhist sutra was the Diamond Sutra printed in CE 868 (printed by an upāsaka for free distribution); although printing of individual Buddhist sutras and related materials may have started as early as the 7th century CE.[92]

The Tibetan Kangyur comprises about a hundred volumes and includes versions of the Vinaya Pitaka, the Dhammapada (under the title Udanavarga) and parts of some other books. Due to the later compilation, it contains comparatively fewer early Buddhist texts than the Pali and Chinese canons.

The Chinese and Tibetan canons are not translations of the Pali and differ from it to varying extents, but contain some recognizably similar early works. However, the Abhidharma books are fundamentally different works from the Pali Abhidhamma Pitaka. The Chinese and Tibetan canons also consist of Mahāyāna sūtras and Vajrayāna tantras, which have few parallels in the Pali Canon.[h]

See also

• Nikāya
• Early Buddhist Texts
• Dhammapada, one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures
• Pali Literature
• Palm-leaf manuscript
• Atthakatha, Pali commentaries on the Pali Canon
• Paracanonical texts (Theravada Buddhism)
• Aṭṭhakavagga and Pārāyanavagga
• Niddesa
• Theravada Buddhism
• Sacca-kiriya
• Buddhaghosa
• Dhammapāla
• Rerukane Chandawimala Thero
• Nyanatiloka Mahathera
• Nyanaponika Thera
• Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu
• Bhikkhu Bodhi
• Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
• Bhikkhu Sujato
• Bhikkhu Analayo
• Thomas William Rhys Davids
• Karl Eugen Neumann
• Pali Text Society
• Dhamma Society Fund
• Buddhist Publication Society
• Pariyatti (bookstore)
• Access to Insight
• Gandhāran Buddhist texts
• Taishō Tripitaka
• Tripitaka Koreana

Notes

1. If the language of the Pāli canon is north Indian in origin, and without substantial Sinhaleseadditions, it is likely that the canon was composed somewhere in north India before its introduction to Sri Lanka.[5]
2. "I am saying that there was a person called the Buddha, that the preachings probably go back to him individually... that we can learn more about what he meant, and that he was saying some very precise things."[31]
3. "While parts of the Pali Canon clearly originated after the time of the Buddha, much must derive from his teaching."[2]
4. "there is no evidence to suggest that it was formulated by anyone else than the Buddha and his immediate followers." [34]
5. "If some of the material is so old, it might be possible to establish what texts go back to the very beginning of Buddhism, texts which perhaps include the substance of the Buddha's teaching, and in some cases, maybe even his words", [5]
6. Ronald Davidson states, "most scholars agree that there was a rough body of sacred literature (disputed) that a relatively early community (disputed) maintained and transmitted."[38]
7. "as the Buddha taught for 45 years, some signs of development in teachings may only reflect changes during this period."[2]
8. Most notably, a version of the Atanatiya Sutta (from the Digha Nikaya) is included in the tantra (Mikkyo, rgyud) divisions of the Taisho and of the Cone, Derge, Lhasa, Lithang, Narthang and Peking (Qianlong) editions of the Kangyur.[93]

References

1. Gombrich 2006, p. 3.
2. Harvey 1990, p. 3.
3. Maguire 2001, p. 69–.
4. Hahn, Thich Nhat (2015). The Heart of Buddha's Teachings. Harmony. p. 16.
5. Wynne 2003.
6. Drewes, David (2015). "Oral Texts in Indian Mahayana". Indo-Iranian Journal. 58: 131. doi:10.1163/15728536-05800051. The idea that Buddhist texts were first written down in the first century bce has been widely current since the nineteenth century, but has never been much more than a guess. Its only basis is a short passage, two verses long, found in both the fourth or fifth-century Dīpavaṃsa and later Mahāvaṃsa,that states that the Tipiṭaka and commentaries were first written down at this time...however, it fairly clearly does not even intend to record the first time writing was ever used for Buddhist texts, but the first creation of a complete set of written scriptures in Sri Lanka.
7. The authenticity of the early buddhist texts.
8. "THE MAHAVAMSA » 33: The Ten Kings". mahavamsa.org. Retrieved 2020-12-24.
9. Robert E. Buswell Jr.; Donald S. Lopez Jr. (2013). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University Press. p. 924. ISBN 978-1-4008-4805-8.
10. Lars Fogelin (2006). Archaeology of Early Buddhism. AltaMira. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-7591-0750-2., Quote: "As of the Pali Canon of Sri Lanka, it was extensively redacted in the fifth or sixth century A.D. (Bechert 1978; Collins 1990; Trainor 1997)".
11. Stargardt, Janice. Tracing Thoughts Through Things: The Oldest Pali Texts and the Early Buddhist Archaeology of India and Burma., Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2000, page 25.
12. Gombrich 2006, p. 4.
13. Encyclopædia Britannica 2008.
14. Gombrich 2006, p. 20.
15. Gombrich 2006, p. 153-4.
16. Morgan 1956, p. 71.
17. McDaniel 2006, p. 302.
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20. Manné 1990, p. 103f.
21. Gethin 1998, p. 43.
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25. Witzel, Michael. “Moving Targets? Texts, Language, Archaeology and History in the Late Vedic and Early Buddhist Periods.” Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 52, no. 2/3, 2009, pp. 287–310. JSTOR 24664702.
26. Von Hinüber, Oskar (1997). A Handbook of Pali Literature (1st Indian ed.). New Delhi: Munishiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. pp. 4–5. ISBN 81-215-0778-2.
27. Harvey 1995, p. 9.
28. Wynne 2007, p. 4.
29. Payutto, P. A. "The Pali Canon What a Buddhist Must Know" (PDF).
30. *Sujato, Bhante; Brahmali, Bhikkhu (2015), The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts (PDF), Chroniker Press, ISBN 978-1312911505
31. Gombrich (b).
32. Gombrich 2006, pp. 20ff.
33. Peter Harvey
34. Warder 1999, p. inside flap.
35. De Jong 1993, p. 25.
36. Wynne, Alex. "The Oral Transmission of Early Buddhist Literature - Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Volume 27. No. 1 2004)".
37. Nakamura 1999, p. 57.
38. Davidson 2003, p. 147.
39. Buswell 2004, p. 10.
40. Ronald Davidson, academic profile Archived November 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
41. about Geoffrey Samuel
42. Samuel 2012, p. 48.
43. Schopen 1997, p. 24.
44. Damien Keown (2004). A Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-19-157917-2.
45. Dī.A. (sumaṅgala.1) Sumaṅgalavilāsinī dīghanikāyaṭṭhakathā sīlakkhandhavaggavaṇṇanā nidānakathā
46. Saṅgaṇi.A. (aṭṭhasālinī) Dhammasaṅgiṇī Abhidhamma-Atthakathā Nidānakathā
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54. Cousins & 1982/3.
55. Harvey, p. 83
56. Gethin 1992, p. 48.
57. Lars Fogelin (2006). Archaeology of Early Buddhism. AltaMira. pp. 37–38. ISBN 978-0-7591-0750-2.
58. Wynne 2004.
59. Ñāṇamoli 1982, p. xxxix.
60. Gethin 1992, p. 8.
61. Harvey, p. 3
62. von Hinüber 2000, pp. 4–5.
63. "Pali Text Society Home Page". Palitext.com. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
64. Grönbold 1984, p. 12 (as noted there and elsewhere, the 1893 Siamese edition was incomplete).
65. Allon 1997, pp. 109–29.
66. Warder 1963, pp. 382.
67. "BUDSIR for Thai Translation". Budsir.org. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
68. "BUDSIR for Thai Translation". Budsir.mahidol.ac.th. Archived from the original on 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2012-10-15.
69. Hamm 1973.
70. "The Pali Tipitaka". Tipitaka.org. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
71. "Vipassana Research Institute". Vri.dhamma.org. 2009-02-08. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
72. "Society worldtipitaka". Dhammasociety.org. 2007-08-29. Archived from the original on 2007-03-17. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
73. Tipiṭaka Studies
74. Sri Lanka Tripitaka Project
75. "Sri Lankan Pāḷi Texts". Archived from the original on 2012-11-24. Retrieved 2013-01-15.
76. "Pali Canon Online Database". BodhgayaNews. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
77. Marston, John (2004). History, Buddhism, and New Religious Movements in Cambodia, p. 77. University of Hawaii Press.
78. "《中国贝叶经全集》新闻发布会暨出版座谈会_华人佛教_凤凰网". Fo.ifeng.com. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
79. Norman 1996, pp. 80.
80. Journal of the Pali Text Society, Volume XXIX, page 102[full citation needed]
81. Griffiths 1981, pp. 17-32.
82. Norman 1983.
83. von Hinüber 2000, pp. 24-26.
84. Harvey, 1990 & appendix.
85. Manné 1990, pp. 29-88.
86. Harvey 1990, p. 83.
87. Gethin 1998, p. 44.
88. Cousins 1982, p. 7.
89. Shults, Brett (May 2014). "On the Buddha's Use of Some Brahmanical Motifs in Pali Texts". Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. 6: 119.
90. Shults 2014, p. 120.
91. Shults 2014, p. 123.
92. Jiang, Wu; Chia, Lucille; Chen, Zhichao (2016). Jiang, Wu; Chia, Lucille (eds.). Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia - The Formation and Transformation of The Chinese Buddhist Canon. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 145. "In the fourth year of the Kaibao 開寶 reign (971), Emperor Taizu (r. 960-975) of the Song Dynasty 宋太祖 ordered the first carving of a set of woodblocks for the Chinese Buddhist Canon." (aka the Kaibao Canon)
93. Skilling 1997, p. 84n, 553ff, 617ff..

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• Cone, Margaret (2001), Dictionary of Pali, vol. I, Oxford: Pali Text Society
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Further reading

• Hinüber, Oskar von (2000). A Handbook of Pāli Literature. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016738-7.
• B. C. Law, History of Pali Literature, volume I, Trubner, London 1931
• Russell Webb (ed.), Analysis of the Pali Canon, The Wheel Publication No 217, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 3rd ed. 2008.
• Ko Lay, U. (2003), Guide to Tipiṭaka, Selangor, Malaysia: Burma Piṭaka Association. Editorial Committee, archived from the original on July 24, 2008

External links

• Sayadaw U Vicittasara Mingun Sayadaw: A Fabulous Memory
• Beginnings: The Pali Suttas by Samanera Bodhesako

English translations

• Access to Insight has many suttas translated into English
• Tipitaka Online of Nibbana.com. Burma (Myanmar)
• English translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi of selected suttas of the Majjhima Nikaya are made available by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition at Wisdom Publications
• English translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi of selected suttas from the Anguttara Nikaya at Wisdom Publications

Pali Canon online

• Vipassana Research Institute (Based on 6th Council – Burmese version) (this site also offers a downloadable program which installs the entire Pali Tipitaka on your desktop for offline viewing)
• Sutta Central Early Buddhist texts, translations, and parallels (Multiple Languages)
• Thai Tripitaka (Thai version)
• Sinhala Tipitaka (Translated into Sinhala by a Government of Sri Lanka initiative)
• Tipitaka Online
• Theravada Buddhism Tipitaka Download

Pali dictionary

• Online Pali-English Dictionary
• Pāli Dictionary Online
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Buddhahood
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/21

For the historical founder of Buddhism, see Gautama Buddha.
"Buddhas" redirects here. For other uses, see Buddha (disambiguation).


The Buddha, in Greco-Buddhist style, first-second century, Gandhara (now Pakistan). (Standing Buddha).


A painting of the Adibuddha, Vajradhara, a figure of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition

In Buddhism, Buddha (/ˈbuːdə, ˈbʊdə/), "awakened one,"[1] is a title for someone who is awake, and has attained nirvana and Buddhahood. The title is most commonly used for Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, who is often simply known as "the Buddha". Buddhahood (Sanskrit: buddhatva; Pali: buddhatta or buddhabhāva; Chinese: 成佛) is the condition and rank of a buddha "awakened one".[2] This highest spiritual state of being is also termed Samyaksaṃbodhi (Full complete Awakening).

The title is also used for other beings who have achieved bodhi (awakening), such as the other human Buddhas who achieved enlightenment before Gautama, the five celestial Buddhas worshiped primarily in Mahayana, and the bodhisattva named Maitreya, who will achieve enlightenment in the future and succeed Gautama Buddha as the supreme Buddha of the world.

The goal of Mahayana's bodhisattva path is complete Buddhahood, so that one may benefit all sentient beings by teaching them the path of cessation of dukkha.[3] Mahayana theory contrasts this with the goal of the Theravada path, where the most common goal is individual arhatship.[3]

Definition

Buddhahood is the state of an awakened being, who, having found the path of cessation of dukkha[4] ("suffering", as created by attachment to desires and distorted perception and thinking) is in the state of "No-more-Learning".[5][6][7]

There is a broad spectrum of opinion on the universality and method of attainment of Buddhahood, depending on Gautama Buddha's teachings that a school of Buddhism emphasizes. The level to which this manifestation requires ascetic practices varies from none at all to an absolute requirement, dependent on doctrine. Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes the bodhisattva ideal instead of the Arhat.

In Theravada Buddhism, Buddha refers to one who has become awake through their own efforts and insight, without a teacher to point out the dharma (Sanskrit; Pali dhamma; "right way of living"). A samyaksambuddha re-discovered the truths and the path to awakening and teaches these to others after his awakening. A pratyekabuddha also reaches Nirvana through his own efforts, but does not teach the dharma to others. An arhat needs to follow the teaching of a Buddha to attain Nirvana, but can also preach the dharma after attaining Nirvana.[8] In one instance the term buddha is also used in Theravada to refer to all who attain Nirvana, using the term Sāvakabuddha to designate an arhat, someone who depends on the teachings of a Buddha to attain Nirvana.[9] In this broader sense it is equivalent to the arhat.

The Tathagatagarba and Buddha-nature doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism consider Buddhahood to be a universal and innate property of absolute wisdom. This wisdom is revealed in a person's current lifetime through Buddhist practice, without any specific relinquishment of pleasures or "earthly desires".

Buddhists do not consider Gautama to have been the only Buddha. The Pāli Canon refers to many previous ones (see list of the named Buddhas), while the Mahayana tradition additionally has many Buddhas of celestial origin (see Amitābha or Vairocana as examples. For lists of many thousands of Buddha names see Taishō Tripiṭaka numbers 439–448).

Nature of the Buddha

Further information: Buddhology

The various Buddhist schools hold some varying interpretations on the nature of Buddha (see below).

Attainments


Seated Buddha, from the Seokguram, Korea.

All Buddhist traditions hold that a Buddha is fully awakened and has completely purified his mind of the three poisons of craving, aversion and ignorance. A Buddha is no longer bound by saṃsāra, and has ended the suffering which unawakened people experience in life.

Most schools of Buddhism have also held that the Buddha was omniscient. However, the early texts contain explicit repudiations of making this claim of the Buddha.[10][11]

Ten characteristics of a Buddha

Some Buddhists meditate on (or contemplate) the Buddha as having ten characteristics (Ch./Jp. 十號). These characteristics are frequently mentioned in the Pāli Canon as well as Mahayana teachings, and are chanted daily in many Buddhist monasteries:

1. Thus gone, thus come (Skt: tathāgata)
2. Worthy one (Skt: arhat)
3. Perfectly self-enlightened (Skt: samyak-saṃbuddha)
4. Perfected in knowledge and conduct (Skt: vidyā-caraṇa-saṃpanna )
5. Well gone (Skt: sugata)
6. Knower of the world (Skt: lokavida)
7. Unsurpassed (Skt: anuttara)
8. Leader of persons to be tamed (Skt: puruṣa-damya-sārathi)
9. Teacher of the gods and humans (Skt: śāsta deva-manuṣyāṇaṃ)
10. The Blessed One or fortunate one (Skt: bhagavat)[12]

The tenth epithet is sometimes listed as "The World Honored Enlightened One" (Skt. Buddha-Lokanatha) or "The Blessed Enlightened One" (Skt. Buddha-Bhagavan).[13]

Ten Indispensable Duties of a Buddha

According to Buddhist texts, upon reaching Buddhahood each Buddha must perform ten acts during his life to complete his duty as a Buddha.[14]

1. A Buddha must predict that another person will attain Buddhahood in the future.
2. A Buddha must inspire somebody else to strive for Buddhahood.
3. A Buddha must convert all whom he must convert
4. A Buddha must live at least three-quarters of his potential lifespan.
5. A Buddha must have clearly defined what are good deeds and what are evil deeds.
6. A Buddha must appoint two of his disciples as his chief disciples.
7. A Buddha must descend from Tavatimsa Heaven after teaching his mother.
8. A Buddha must hold an assembly at Lake Anavatapta.
9. A Buddha must bring his parents to the Dhamma.
10. A Buddha must have performed the great Miracle at Savatthi.

Buddha as a supreme human

In the Pāli Canon, Gautama Buddha is known as being a "teacher of the gods and humans", superior to both the gods and humans in the sense of having nirvana or the greatest bliss, whereas the devas, or gods, are still subject to anger, fear and sorrow.

In the Madhupindika Sutta (MN 18),[15] Buddha is described in powerful terms as the Lord of the Dhamma (Pali: Dhammasami, skt.: Dharma Swami) and the bestower of immortality (Pali: Amatassadata).

Similarly, in the Anuradha Sutta (SN 44.2)[16] Buddha is described as

the Tathagata—the supreme man, the superlative man, attainer of the superlative attainment.

[Buddha is asked about what happens to the Tathagatha after death of the physical body. Buddha replies],

"And so, Anuradha—when you can't pin down the Tathagata as a truth or reality even in the present life—is it proper for you to declare, 'Friends, the Tathagata—the supreme man, the superlative man, attainer of the superlative attainment—being described, is described otherwise than with these four positions: The Tathagata exists after death, does not exist after death, both does & does not exist after death, neither exists nor does not exist after death'?

In the Vakkali Sutta (SN 22.87) Buddha identifies himself with the Dhamma:[17]

O Vakkali, whoever sees the Dhamma, sees me [the Buddha]

Another reference from the Aggañña Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, says to his disciple Vasettha:

O Vasettha! The Word of Dhammakaya is indeed the name of the Tathagata

Shravasti Dhammika, a Theravada monk, writes:

In the centuries after his final Nibbāna it sometimes got to the stage that the legends and myths obscured the very real human being behind them and the Buddha came to be looked upon as a god. Actually, the Buddha was a human being, not a 'mere human being' as is sometimes said but a special class of human called a 'complete person' (mahāparisa). Such complete persons are born no different from others and indeed they physically remain quite ordinary.[18]

Sangharakshita also states that "The first thing we have to understand—and this is very important—is that the Buddha is a human being. But a special kind of human being, in fact the highest kind, so far as we know."[19]

In Buddhism the idea of superman completely replaces the idea of the Deity; because Buddha is not God, he is only a superman.

-- A New Model of the Universe, by Pyotr Ouspenskii

Buddha as a human

When asked whether he was a deva or a human, he replied that he had eliminated the deep-rooted unconscious traits that would make him either one, and should instead be called a Buddha; one who had grown up in the world but had now gone beyond it, as a lotus grows from the water but blossoms above it, unsoiled.[20]

Andrew Skilton writes that the Buddha was never historically regarded by Buddhist traditions as being merely human:[21]

It is important to stress that, despite modern Theravada teachings to the contrary (often a sop to skeptical Western pupils), he was never seen as being merely human. For instance, he is often described as having the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks or signs of a mahāpuruṣa, "superman"; the Buddha himself denied that he was either a man or a god; and in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta he states that he could live for an aeon were he asked to do so.

However, Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk in the Zen tradition, states that "Buddha was not a god. He was a human being like you and me, and he suffered just as we do."[22]

Jack Maguire writes that Buddha is inspirational based on his humanness.

A fundamental part of Buddhism's appeal to billions of people over the past two and a half millennia is the fact that the central figure, commonly referred to by the title "Buddha", was not a god, or a special kind of spiritual being, or even a prophet or an emissary of one. On the contrary, he was a human being like the rest of us who quite simply woke up to full aliveness.[23]

Basing his teachings on the Lotus Sutra, the Chinese monk Chi-hi (the founder of the Tendai Sect) developed an explanation of life "three thousand realms in a single moment", which posits a Buddha nature that can be awakened in any life,[24] and that it is possible for a person to become "enlightened to the Law".[25] In this view, the state of Buddhahood and the states of ordinary people are exist with and within each other.[26]

Nichiren, the founder of Nichiren Buddhism states that the real meaning of the Lord Shakyamuni Buddha’s appearance in this world lay in his behavior as a human being.[27]:336¬-37 He also stated that "Shakyamuni Buddha . . . the Lotus Sutra ... and we ordinary human beings are in no way different or separate from each other".[28][better source needed]

Mahāsāṃghika supramundane Buddha

In the early Buddhist schools, the Mahāsāṃghika branch regarded the buddhas as being characterized primarily by their supramundane nature. The Mahāsāṃghikas advocated the transcendental and supramundane nature of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the fallibility of arhats.[29] Of the 48 special theses attributed by the Samayabhedoparacanacakra to the Mahāsāṃghika Ekavyāvahārika, Lokottaravāda, and the Kukkuṭika, 20 points concern the supramundane nature of buddhas and bodhisattvas.[30] According to the Samayabhedoparacanacakra, these four groups held that the Buddha is able to know all dharmas in a single moment of the mind.[31] Yao Zhihua writes:[31]

In their view, the Buddha is equipped with the following supernatural qualities: transcendence (lokottara), lack of defilements, all of his utterances preaching his teaching, expounding all his teachings in a single utterance, all of his sayings being true, his physical body being limitless, his power (prabhāva) being limitless, the length of his life being limitless, never tiring of enlightening sentient beings and awakening pure faith in them, having no sleep or dreams, no pause in answering a question, and always in meditation (samādhi).

A doctrine ascribed to the Mahāsāṃghikas is, "The power of the tathāgatas is unlimited, and the life of the buddhas is unlimited."[32] According to Guang Xing, two main aspects of the Buddha can be seen in Mahāsāṃghika teachings: the true Buddha who is omniscient and omnipotent, and the manifested forms through which he liberates sentient beings through skillful means.[33] For the Mahāsaṃghikas, the historical Gautama Buddha was one of these transformation bodies (Skt. nirmāṇakāya), while the essential real Buddha is equated with the Dharmakāya.[34]

As in Mahāyāna traditions, the Mahāsāṃghikas held the doctrine of the existence of many contemporaneous buddhas throughout the ten directions.[35] In the Mahāsāṃghika Lokānuvartana Sūtra, it is stated, "The Buddha knows all the dharmas of the countless buddhas of the ten directions."[35] It is also stated, "All buddhas have one body, the body of the Dharma."[35] The concept of many bodhisattvas simultaneously working toward buddhahood is also found among the Mahāsāṃghika tradition, and further evidence of this is given in the Samayabhedoparacanacakra, which describes the doctrines of the Mahāsāṃghikas.[36]

Lists of Buddhas


"The Seven Buddhas", at Sanchi (1st century BCE/CE). Six Buddhas of the past are represented, together with the current Buddha, Gautama Buddha, with his Bodhi Tree (at the extreme right). In the central section are three stupas alternating with four trees with thrones in front of them, adored by figures both human and divine. These represent six Buddhas of the past (namely: Vipassī Buddha, Sikhī Buddha, Vessabhū Buddha, Kakusandha Buddha, Koṇāgamana Buddha and Kassapa Buddha). Three are symbolized by their stupas, and four by the trees under which each respectively attained enlightenment. The tree on the extreme right is the pipal tree of Gautama Buddha and the one next to it is the banyan tree of Kassapa Buddha. The identification of the others is less certain.[37]


Sumedha, the youth who would after many reincarnations become Gautama Buddha, receiving his niyatha vivarana (prediction of future Buddhahood) from Dīpankara Buddha

The Seven Buddhas of Antiquity

In the earliest strata of Pali Buddhist texts, especially in the first four Nikayas, only the following seven Buddhas, The Seven Buddhas of Antiquity (Saptatathāgata), are explicitly mentioned and named:

1. Vipassī
2. Sikhī
3. Vessabhū
4. Kakusandha
5. Koṇāgamana
6. Kasyapa
7. Gautama

One sutta called Cakkavatti-Sīhanāda Sutta from an early Buddhist text called the Digha Nikaya also mentions that following the Seven Buddhas of Antiquity, a Buddha named Maitreya is predicted to arise in the world.[38]

However, according to a text in the Theravada Buddhist tradition from a later strata (between 1st and 2nd century BCE) called the Buddhavamsa, twenty-one more Buddhas were added to the list of seven names in the early texts.[39][40] Theravada tradition maintains that there can be up to five Buddhas in a kalpa or world age and that the current kalpa has had four Buddhas, with the current Buddha, Gotama, being the fourth and the future Buddha Metteyya being the fifth and final Buddha of the kalpa. This would make the current aeon a bhadrakalpa (fortunate aeon). In some Sanskrit and northern Buddhist traditions however, a bhadrakalpa has up to 1,000 Buddhas, with the Buddhas Gotama and Metteyya also being the fourth and fifth Buddhas of the kalpa respectively.[41]

According to the Theravada tradition, of the seven Buddhas named in the early Buddhist texts four are from the current kalpa and three are from past ones.[41]

1. Vipassī (lived ninety-one kalpas ago)
2. Sikhī (lived thirty-one kalpas ago)
3. Vessabhū (lived thirty-one kalpas ago in the same kalpa as Sikhī)
4. Kakusandha (the first Buddha of the current bhadrakalpa)
5. Koṇāgamana (the second Buddha of the current bhadrakalpa)
6. Kassapa (the third Buddha of the current bhadrakalpa)
7. Gautama (the fourth and present Buddha of the current bhadrakalpa)


"Budha-sa Konākamana-sa" ("Of the Kanakamuni Buddha") inscription in the Brahmi Script, at Nigali Sagar, 250 BCE


The words "Bu-dhe" and "Sa-kya-mu-nī" in Brahmi script, on the Rummindei pillar of Ashoka.

The Koṇāgamana Buddha, is mentioned in a 3rd-century BCE inscription by Ashoka at Nigali Sagar, in today's Nepal. There is an Ashoka pillar at the site today. Ashoka's inscription in the Brahmi script is on the fragment of the pillar still partly buried in the ground. The inscription made when Emperor Asoka at Nigali Sagar in 249 BCE records his visit, the enlargement of a stupa dedicated to the Kanakamuni Buddha, and the erection of a pillar.[42][43]

According to Xuanzang, Koṇāgamana's relics were held in a stupa in Nigali Sagar, in what is now Kapilvastu District in southern Nepal.[44]

The historical Buddha, Gautama, also called Sakyamuni ("Sage of the Shakyas), is mentioned epigraphically on the Pillar of Ashoka at Rummindei (Lumbini in modern Nepal). The Brahmi script inscription on the pillar gives evidence that Ashoka, emperor of the Maurya Empire, visited the place in 3rd-century BCE and identified it as the birth-place of the Buddha.[45][note 1]

When King Devānāmpriya Priyadasin had been anointed twenty years, he came himself and worshipped (this spot) because the Buddha Shakyamuni was born here. (He) both caused to be made a stone bearing a horse (?) and caused a stone pillar to be set up, (in order to show) that the Blessed One was born here. (He) made the village of Lummini free of taxes, and paying (only) an eighth share (of the produce).

— The Rummindei Edict, one of the Minor Pillar Edicts of Ashoka.[48]

The 29 Buddhas of Theravāda


Buddhist men at the Sule Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar, paying homage to the 29 Buddhas described in Chapter 27 of the Buddhavamsa

The Pali literature of the Theravāda tradition includes tales of 29 Buddhas. In countries where Theravāda Buddhism is practiced by the majority of people, such as Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, it is customary for Buddhists to hold elaborate festivals, especially during the fair weather season, paying homage to the 29 Buddhas described in the Buddhavamsa. The Buddhavamsa is a text which describes the life of Gautama Buddha and the 27 Buddhas who preceded him, along with the future Metteyya Buddha.[49] The Buddhavamsa is part of the Khuddaka Nikāya, which in turn is part of the Sutta Piṭaka. The Sutta Piṭaka is one of three main sections of the Pāli Canon.

The first three of these Buddhas—Taṇhaṅkara, Medhaṅkara, and Saraṇaṅkara—lived before the time of Dīpankara Buddha. The fourth Buddha, Dīpankara, is especially important, as he was the Buddha who gave niyatha vivarana (prediction of future Buddhahood) to the Brahmin youth who would in the distant future become the bodhisattva Gautama Buddha.[50] After Dīpankara, 25 more noble people (ariya-puggala) would attain enlightenment before Gautama, the historical Buddha.

Many Buddhists also pay homage to the future (and 29th) Buddha, Metteyya. According to Buddhist scripture, Metteya will be a successor of Gautama who will appear on Earth, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure Dharma. The prophecy of the arrival of Metteyya is found in the canonical literature of all Buddhist sects (Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana), and is accepted by most Buddhists as a statement about an event that will take place when the Dharma will have been forgotten on Jambudvipa (the terrestrial realm, where ordinary human beings live).

Pāli name[51][52][53] / Sanskrit name / Class(Varṇa)[52][53] / Birthplace[52][53] / Parents[52][53] / Bodhirukka (tree of enlightenment)[52][53][54] / Incarnation of Gautama[53]

1 Taṇhaṅkara Tṛṣṇaṃkara Kshatriya Popphavadi King Sunandha and Queen Sunandhaa Rukkaththana
2 Medhaṅkara Medhaṃkara Yaghara Sudheva and Yasodhara Kaela
3 Saraṇaṅkara Śaraṇaṃkara Vipula Sumangala and Yasawathi Pulila
4 Dīpaṃkara Dīpaṃkara Brahmin Rammawatinagara Sudheva and Sumedhaya Pipphala Sumedha (also Sumati or Megha Mānava, a rich Brahman)[55]
5 Koṇḍañña Kauṇḍinya Kshatriya Rammawatinagara Sunanda and Sujata Salakalyana Vijitawi (a Chakravarti in Chandawatinagara of Majjhimadesa)
6 Maṅgala Maṃgala [56] Uttaranagara (Majhimmadesa) Uttara (father) and Uttara (mother) A naga Suruchi (in Siribrahmano)
7 Sumana Sumanas Kshatriya[56] Mekhalanagara Sudassana and Sirima A naga King Atulo, a Naga
8 Revata[57] Raivata Brahmin[56] Sudhannawatinagara Vipala and Vipula A naga A Veda-versed Brahman
9 Sobhita Śobhita Kshatriya[56] Sudhammanagara Sudhammanagara (father) and Sudhammanagara (mother) A naga Sujata, a Brahman (in Rammavati)
10 Anomadassi Anavamadarśin Brahmin[56] Chandawatinagara Yasava and Yasodara Ajjuna A Yaksha king
11 Paduma[58] Padma Kshatriya[56] Champayanagara Asama (father) and Asama (mother) Salala A lion
12 Nārada Nārada Kshatriya Dhammawatinagara King Sudheva and Anopama Sonaka A tapaso in Himalayas
13 Padumuttara[59] Padmottara Kshatriya Hansawatinagara Anurula and Sujata Salala Jatilo, an ascetic
14 Sumedha Sumedha Kshatriya Sudasananagara Sumedha (father) and Sumedha (mother) Nipa Native of Uttaro
15 Sujāta Sujāta Kshatriya Sumangalanagara Uggata and Pabbavati Welu A chakravarti
16 Piyadassi[60] Priyadarśin Brahmin Sudannanagara Sudata and Subaddha Kakudha Kassapa, a Brahmin (at Siriwattanagara)
17 Atthadassi Arthadarśin Kshatriya Sonanagara Sagara and Sudassana Champa Susino, a Brahman
18 Dhammadassī Dharmadarśin Kshatriya Surananagara Suranamaha and Sunanada Bimbajala Indra, the leader of the gods (devas)
19 Siddhattha Siddhārtha Brahmin Vibharanagara Udeni and Suphasa Kanihani Mangal, a Brahman
20 Tissa Tiṣya Kshatriya Khemanagara Janasando and Paduma Assana King Sujata of Yasawatinagara
21 Phussa[61] Puṣya Kshatriya Kāśi Jayasena and Siremaya Amalaka Vijitavi
22 Vipassī Vipaśyin Kshatriya Bandhuvatinagara Vipassi (father) and Vipassi (mother) Pāṭalī (Stereospermum chelonoides) King Atula
23 Sikhī Śikhin Kshatriya Arunavattinagara Arunavatti and Paphavatti Puṇḍarīka (Mangifera indica) Arindamo (at Paribhuttanagara)
24 Vessabhū Viśvabhū Kshatriya Anupamanagara Suppalittha and Yashavati Sāla (Shorea robusta) Sadassana (in Sarabhavatinagara)
25 Kakusandha Krakucchanda Brahmin Khemavatinagara Aggidatta, the purohita Brahman of King Khema, and Visakha Sirīsa (Albizia lebbeck) King Khema[62]
26 Koṇāgamana Kanakamuni Brahmin[63] Sobhavatinagara Yaññadatta, a Brahman, and Uttara Udumbara (Ficus racemosa) King Pabbata of a mountainous area in Mithila
27 Kassapa[64] Kāśyapa Brahmin Baranasinagara Brahmadatta, a Brahman, and Dhanavati Nigrodha (Ficus benghalensis) Jotipala (at Vappulla)
28 Gotama (current) Gautama (current) Kshatriya Lumbini King Suddhodana and Māyā Assattha (Ficus religiosa) Gautama, the Buddha
29 Metteyya Maitreya Brahmin[65] Ketumatī[66] Subrahma and Brahmavati[66] Nāga (Mesua ferrea)

Mahayana Buddhas


The Great Buddha of Kamakura, a Japanese statue of Amida, cast in the 13th century.

Mahayana Buddhists venerate numerous Buddhas, that are not found in early Buddhism or in Theravada Buddhism. They are generally seen as living in other realms, known as Buddhafields or Pure Lands. They are sometimes called "celestial Buddhas", since they are not from this earth.

Some of the key Mahayana Buddhas are:

• Akshobhya ("the Imperturbable")
• Amitābha (Amida Buddha, "Infinite Light"), principal Buddha of Pure Land Buddhism
• Amoghasiddhi (“Infallible Success”)
• Bhaisajyaguru (also known as Medicine Buddha)
• Ratnasambhava ("Jewel Born")
• Vairocana ("the Illuminator")
• Lokesvararaja

In Tantric Buddhism


Painting of Vajrayoginī (Dorjé Neljorma), a female Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism.

In Tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana), one finds some of the same Mahayana Buddhas along with other Buddha figures which are unique to Vajrayana. There are five primary Buddhas known as the "Five Tathagathas": Vairocana, Aksobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitābha, and Amoghasiddhi. Each is associated with a different consort, direction, aggregate (or, aspect of the personality), emotion, element, color, symbol, and mount.[67] Buddhist Tantra also includes several female Buddhas, such as Tara, the most popular female Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, who comes in many forms and colors.

In the tantras, there are various fierce deities which are tantric forms of the Buddhas. These may be fierce (Tibetan: trowo, Sanskrit: krodha) Buddha forms or semi-fierce, and may appear in sexual union with a female Buddha or as a "solitary hero". The Herukas (Tb. khrag 'thung, lit. "blood drinker") are enlightened masculine beings who adopt fierce forms to help beings. They include Yamantaka, Cakrasamvara, Hevajra, Mahākāla, and Vajrakilaya. Dakinis (Tb. khandroma, "sky-goer") are their feminine counterparts, sometimes depicted with a heruka and sometimes as independent deities. The most prevalent wrathful dakinis are Vajrayogini, Vajravārāhī, Nairatmya, and Kurukullā.

Buddhist mythology overlapped with Hindu mythology. Akshobhya, for example, acquires a fierce Tantric form that is reminiscent of the fierce form of the Hindu god Shiva; in this form he became known by the Buddhist names Heruka, Hevajra, or Samvara. He is known in Japan in this guise as Fudō (“Imperturbable”). The Indian god Bhairava, a fierce bull-headed divinity, was adopted by Tantric Buddhists as Vajrabhairava. Also called Yamantaka (“Slayer of Death”) and identified as the fierce expression of the gentle Manjushri, he was accorded quasi-buddha rank.

There is also the idea of the Adi-Buddha, the "first Buddha" to attain Buddhahood. Variously named as Vajradhara, Samantabhadra and Vairocana, the first Buddha is also associated with the concept of Dharmakaya. Some historical figures are also seen as Buddhas, such as the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, Tibetan historical figures like Padmasambhava, and Tsongkhapa.

Depictions of the Buddha in art

Main article: Buddharupa


Buddha statues at Shwedagon Pagoda

Buddhas are frequently represented in the form of statues and paintings. Commonly seen designs include:

• The Seated Buddha
• The Reclining Buddha
• The Standing Buddha
• Hotei or Budai, the obese Laughing Buddha, usually seen in China (This figure is bel