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[This version: 15 November 1993]
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THE DHAMMAPADA
An anthology of 423 Buddhist verses embodying ethical and spiritual
precepts arranged by subject.
Translated from Pali by John Richards.
Copyright (c) 1993 John Richards, Pembrokeshire (UK)
Internet - jhr@elidor.demon.co.uk, CompuServe ID - 100113,1250
The Dhammapada - Information
The Dhammapada is an anthology of verses, belonging to the part of the
Theravada Pali Canon of scriptures known as the Khuddaka Nikaya, and
consists of 423 verses.
Something like a quarter of the verses are to be found in other parts of
the Pali Tipitaka, particularly in the other verse parts of the Khuddaka
Nikaya such as the Sutta Nipata and the Thera- and Theri-gatha.
The Dhammapada is probably the most popular book of the Pali Canon, with
the possible exception of the Satipatthana Sutta, or the Sutta on the
Turning of the Wheel of the Law (Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana Sutta). It is
certainly the most frequently translated portion.
There are a number of Mahayana works to which it appears to be closely
related. There are in the Chinese scriptures 4 works resembling the
Dhammapada. The nearest is the Fa Chu Ching, which was translated in AD
223. (translated by Beal), the first part of which seems to be a direct
translation of the Pali Dhammapada. (It is intriguing to wonder how a
Pali work found its way to China in those early years. The Introduction
merely says it was brought from India and was translated as a joint
venture by a Chinese and an Indian.) One small piece of evidence that
the Chinese is a translation from the Pali is found in the verse
corrsponding to the Pali verse 146. The Chinese here reads "remembering
the everlasting burnings", having mistaken the word "sati", (which in
the Pali is the locative case of the present participle of a verb for
"being") for the noun "sati", memory, or recollection. The later part of
the Chinese appears to be an anthology in its own right.
There is also a Dhammapada in the Gandhari language (edited and
translated by Brough), but although it contains at least half of its
verses in common with the Pali Dhammapada, the order and distribution
make it fairly certain that there is no direct link between the two
works.
There is another work in Sanskrit called the Udanavarga, which also has
a large number of verses in common with the Dhammapada, but again seems
to be a completely independent compilation. It is often most instructive
though to compare some of the verses in these different collections.
Sometimes they are effectively identical, but at other times they are
radically different. It would be a rash man, in our present state of
scholarship, who ventured to assert which is the original.
Like most anthologies of verses, the Dhammapada is very uneven. Some
verses are both profound and deeply poetic. Others are awkward, and
little more than a list of technical terms. The overall effect of the
Dhammapada however is undoubtedly of high moral and spiritual
earnestness, and a typically Buddhist gentle persuasiveness. It would be
hard to point to a poetic book of a similar length in world religious
literature of a correspondingly sustained level.
- John Richards (19.Oct.1993)
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