The Dhammapada is one of the best-known and best-loved works of Buddhist literature.1 It forms part of the oldest surviving body of Buddhist writings, generally known as the Canon. This means that it is regarded as part of the authentic teaching of the Buddha himself, spoken by him in his lifetime, memorized, and compiled for oral transmission shortly after his death.2
The name ‘Dhammapada’ means a word or verse3 of the Dhamma, the teaching of the Buddha. It has become the recognized title of the work, even in translation, though some have attempted to translate it.4 The Dhammapada belongs to a type of composition that must be very ancient indeed: a collection of wise sayings in verse, attributed to a great teacher, and handed down among his followers.
There seem at one time to have been a number of versions of the Dhammapada, in different though closely related languages. The one translated here in full is in the Pali language, and belongs to the Pali Canon, the collection of scriptures recognized as authentic by followers of the Theravāda school of Buddhism.5 But I have also included in the Appendices brief extracts from other early versions, to give some idea of the range of literature of this type that must once have existed.
The format of the Dhammapada is simple: it is a collection of verses, each consisting of four, or occasionally six, half-lines or pādas. Within the collection, the verses are arranged in chapters (vagga), each with a one-word title. Chapters may be named either from the format of the verses contained in them – for example Chapter 1, Yamaka, ‘Twins’ or ‘Pairs’, consisting mainly of contrasting pairs of verses – or from key words – for example Chapter 4, Puppha, ‘Flowers’, made up of verses which refer either to flowers in general or to particular kinds of flowers or perfumes. The titles help to give each chapter a loose theme, though the placing of verses in particular chapters sometimes seems a little arbitrary: for example, v. 325 appears to have nothing to do with the theme of Chapter 23, Nāga, ‘The Elephant’, other than the fact that it mentions another large animal, a ‘great boar’. Many of the verses are capable of standing alone, while others form short sequences within the chapters; overall, the Dhammapada reads more like an anthology than a single long poem. Each verse or group of verses is now associated with explanatory material from a commentary, the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā, which not only expounds its meaning but also describes the occasion on which the Buddha is said to have spoken the teaching.6
The verse forms used are not very elaborate. The metres of Pali verse, like those of classical Greek and Latin, are based on long and short syllables, not, like traditional English ones, on stress. Rhyme is not used, but alliteration is frequent. The majority of verses are in a metre known in Sanskrit as śloka or anuṣṭubh,7 the basic medium for storytelling and instruction; but a variety of others are also used – often, it appears, for particular emotional effect.
As far as we can tell after an interval of more than two thousand years, the language used in the Dhammapada would not have struck its original hearers as difficult or obscure. Its diction seems generally clear and direct, though here and there we find examples of the puns and paradoxes so popular with ancient Indian authors.8 Though there are some verses that now seem obscure, such difficulties generally seem to be the result of changes in language that caused the original meanings to be forgotten: the verse may then have been emended in the attempt to find meaning in it.9 But, on the whole, the Dhammapada was and remains easy to understand and to memorize – qualities which have no doubt contributed to its popularity.
Like the language, the content has an accessible quality. The verses give ethical advice, or remind the hearer of the transience of life and the delusiveness of sense-desires. Some of the teaching is aimed primarily at monks and nuns (e.g. vv. 9–10, 73–5), and some at laypeople (e.g. vv. 303, 309–10); but most of it is clearly meant to be applicable to every would-be follower of the Buddha’s path (e.g. vv. 127–8, 227–8). Indeed, much of the content of the Dhammapada would have been regarded as uncontroversial by members of any of ancient India’s religious groups; and some of the verses are almost identical with ones found in Hindu or Jain texts.10 But there are also verses and longer sequences that refer to specifically Buddhist themes, such as the qualities of the Buddha, or the Four Noble Truths (e.g. vv. 179–96). It is widely used in Theravāda countries as an accessible introduction to the Buddha’s teaching.
The life of the Buddha remains a subject of considerable debate among scholars. While very few would doubt that a genuine historical figure lies behind the teachings that bear that name, it is clear that in the millennia since his lifetime a considerable amount of legendary material has become attached to his story. The earliest and simplest narratives – those found in the Pali Canon – are principally interested in the quest leading up to his attainment of Buddhahood and his subsequent career as teacher. Many of the best-known stories of his life – for example the details of his birth and childhood – appear first in the commentaries. But modern attempts to find historical truth behind the legends have to reckon with the fact that even the canonical accounts include miraculous events such as prophecies and encounters with deities. The compilers of these ancient texts naturally saw and expressed the world in mythical and symbolic terms, not in modern rationalistic ones.
The following is a summary of the basic events of the Buddha’s life, as generally accepted in the Buddhist world.11 The Bodhisatta, or Buddha-to-be, was born in a royal family from the Sākiya12 clan of north-east India, and was given the names Siddhattha and Gotama.13 He was known from the first to be no ordinary child. A sage who saw the newborn prince prophesied that he would be a great man, who would rediscover the Dhamma, found by all previous Buddhas, and teach it to the world. According to the commentarial versions, his father was aghast at the idea that his son might choose to become a wandering holy man, instead of the great ruler that he wished him to be, so he went to extreme lengths to ensure that his son would remain happily in the household life, providing him with every luxury, surrounding him solely with beautiful, healthy young people, and, when the time came, arranging a marriage for him with his cousin,14 who eventually bore him a son, Rāhula.
Despite the efforts to shelter him from the suffering (dukkha) of life, the young prince came to see it all around him in the form of old age, sickness and death. Seeking to make an end of suffering, he left his wealth and status to become a wandering holy man. The commentarial accounts dramatize this in a series of encounters with an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a holy man,15 and describe his night-time escape from a palace where he was effectively held prisoner. The canonical version simply says that he cut off his hair and beard, put on the ochre robe of a renunciant, and went forth into the homeless life, though his mother and father were reluctant and wept to see him go.16
In the Canon,17 the Buddha describes his search for freedom from suffering. After leaving home, the young man sought out renowned meditation masters: first Āḷāra Kālāma, and then Uddaka Rāmaputta. He quickly learned everything that they could teach him. Āḷāra invited him to share the leadership of his group with him, and Uddaka even offered to hand over leadership of his group and follow him instead. But, although their meditation techniques could provide a temporary peace, they did not lead to complete freedom from suffering, so the Bodhisatta moved on.
He now undertook severe asceticism, deliberately subjecting his body to extremes of heat and cold, and starving himself nearly to death. This proved just as useless for his quest as the indulgence of his former princely life had been, so he gave it up and began once more to eat in moderation. A group of five ascetics who had been practising with him were disgusted at what they saw as a failure on his part, and abandoned him.
He travelled on to Gayā, in modern Bihar state. There, on the full-moon night of Vesākha (April–May), he sat beneath a pipal tree, making a determination to achieve liberation there, or die in the attempt. The Bodhisatta had remembered an occasion in his childhood when he had experienced a peaceful meditative state (jhāna) through observing his breath. He realized that this was the key to the practice that he needed: through the jhānas he could still his mind in order to penetrate to the cause of suffering.
By the end of that night he had understood the reality of suffering, and achieved the ultimate freedom, bodhi, often translated as ‘enlightenment’, but more accurately ‘awakening’. Because of that, Gayā is now called Bodh (= Bodhi) Gaya, and18 the tree under which he sat is called the Bodhi (or Bo) tree. He had now won the title of Buddha (‘Awakened One’). He was thirty-five years old. From this point he is regarded as an enlightened being, free from suffering of the mind – though while he lived his body was still subject to old age, illness and eventual death.
The Buddha spent seven weeks at Gayā contemplating and organizing the insights he had reached, and then began to consider whether he should attempt to teach others. He knew that it would be a difficult task, since few would be able to understand the insights for which he had struggled so long. But a deity called Brahmā Sahampati approached him on behalf of all beings and requested him to teach the Dhamma. There were some beings, he said, who had little dust in their eyes, and would be able to understand it if the Buddha were to teach. Out of compassion, the Buddha agreed.
Looking around with the eye of wisdom, he searched for people capable of understanding his message. Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta had both died, and as a result of their meditations were now in peaceful realms where, however, they could not become conscious of the Buddha’s teaching. But the five companions who had practised asceticism with him were still alive and searching for liberation. Over the next few weeks the Buddha walked from Gayā to Sarnath (near Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh) to see them. On the way he received alms from two merchants, Tapussa and Bhallika, who became the first lay Buddhists.
When the five ascetics saw him coming, they determined not to pay him the usual marks of respect, being still angry with his supposed lapse from asceticism; but, when he came closer, his presence was such that they could not help but show him reverence. To them he gave his famous first teaching, the Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Dhamma,19 in the Deer Park at Isipatana, near Varanasi. He taught the Four Noble Truths, of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path leading to the cessation of suffering. First Koṇḍañña, then the rest of the five, attained liberation through the Buddha’s teaching, and so became the first Arahats,20 as well as the first monks, of his dispensation. Now all the Three Refuges of Buddhism were present in this world: the Buddha; the Dhamma, or Teaching, rediscovered by each Buddha; and the Saṅgha, or Community.
From then on the Buddha continued to travel around northern India on foot, teaching people of every possible class and background, and enabling many of them to reach high spiritual attainments. Among those who eventually achieved Arahatship through his teaching were many members of his family – though his jealous cousin Devadatta constantly plotted against him, seeking to wrest control of the Buddhist community for himself.
The Buddha had lived to the age of eighty when, feeling the effects of old age, he went to a grove of sal trees at Kusinārā (Sanskrit Kuśinagara, modern Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh).21 There he lay down on his right side under two trees, which shed blossoms on him, out of season. His last words to his followers were ‘Conditioned things are by nature perishable. Attain your goal through awareness!’22 After experiencing for the last time all the stages of jhāna, he passed away, entering parinibbāna – the end of rebirths and the complete cessation of suffering. The texts do not attempt to describe the condition of a being who has attained parinibbāna, since words no longer have any relevance in this case. His body was cremated, and his relics distributed among local rulers, who had them installed in stūpas (reliquary mounds) suitable for a great monarch.
Shortly after the Parinibbāna, a council was convened at which the monks recited together all that they had learned of the Buddha’s teachings, so compiling what became the Pali Canon, to be memorized and handed on orally for the following centuries.
The Parinibbāna of the Buddha forms the basis of Buddhist chronology, but all the great schools of Buddhism seem to have had their own traditions concerning its date. Some Far Eastern schools placed it as early as 949 BCE,23 while the Tibetans dated it to 881 BCE. The tradition handed down in the Theravāda world places the Parinibbāna in 543 BCE – a date that is increasingly accepted in the Buddhist world as a whole as a starting point for the Buddhist Era used in calendars. According to this tradition, the Buddha was born in 623 BCE, and attained awakening in 588 BCE. Many current scholars, however, would date the Parinibbāna as much as 150 years later – to around 400 BCE. This would date the Buddha’s teaching career, and the presumed origins of the canonical literature, to the late fifth century BCE rather than the late seventh or early sixth century given by the Theravāda tradition.24
It is often said that the Pali Canon was not put into writing until the first century BCE, in Sri Lanka – a tradition that seems to be based on just two verses in the Dīpavaṃsa (c. fourth century CE), the traditional Pali chronicle of the island.25 However, even if that is true for the Canon as a whole, it seems more than likely that Dhammapada verses, and similar poetic works, were committed to writing, separately or in groups, before that, as hearers would have had a strong motive to record them and share them with others.26
Pali (Pāḷi) is one of the group of languages classified by scholars as ‘Middle Indian’ or ‘Prakrit’.27 These languages are descended from Sanskrit, or rather from the spoken Old Indian language of which Sanskrit was a refined version – just as the Italic languages, Italian, French, Spanish etc., are descended from the vernacular Latin spoken in the Roman Empire, rather than from the literary language of Virgil and Tacitus.
The Old and Middle Indian languages belong to the Indo-Iranian (or ‘Indo-Aryan’) branch of the Indo-European family, and so are distant relatives of English, Latin, Greek and indeed most of the languages of Europe. In consequence, certain words in Pali are likely to sound familiar to the English reader: for example, mātā, ‘mother’; pitā, ‘father’; deva, ‘god’ (cf. Latin deus); dvi, ‘two’. The relationship between, say, English and Sanskrit or Pali is that of distant cousins. Claims that English is ‘descended’ from Sanskrit are pure fantasy. Both share a remote ancestor (‘Proto-Indo-European’) that ceased to exist in prehistoric times but has in part been reconstructed by philologists.
The Pali language originated in northern India in the centuries before the Common Era, but spread throughout the Theravāda Buddhist countries, first to southern India, and then to Sri Lanka and South East Asia, as a language of scholarship and religion. The early history of the language, and even its original name, is something of a mystery. The current use of the name ‘Pali’ is in fact the result of a misunderstanding. Pāḷi was originally the word for a text, as distinct from a commentary (aṭṭhakathā), so pāḷi-bhāsā meant ‘the language of the sacred texts’. But by about the seventeenth century CE it had come to be understood as a name, ‘the Pali language’, and the usage has stuck. Its own speakers in ancient India seem to have called it Māgadha-bhāsā, meaning that it was the language of Māgadha in north-east India. But the name ‘Māgadha’ itself seems to have had a range of meanings. At times it referred to a small area around the city of Rājagaha (Sanskrit Rājagṛha, modern Rajgir, Bihar); at others to a large area under the suzerainty of the rulers of Pāṭaliputta (Sanskrit Pāṭaliputra, modern Patna, Bihar). Judging from surviving inscriptions, there was a wide degree of standardization in the language of the whole administrative area, with certain differences in local dialect which would not have prevented its being generally understood.28 The language of the Pali Canon was therefore not simply one dialect among many, but a form of the lingua franca of a powerful empire, the first in fact that was used for official inscriptions in India. (Although Sanskrit is philologically older than Pali, its use in inscriptions is generally later.)
As long as the Pali Canon was the only early Buddhist Canon known to scholars, it was widely thought to be a literal record of the Buddha’s own words; but, since the discovery of canonical material in other Middle Indian languages, scholars no longer consider this likely. However, even if the language of the surviving Pali texts is not exactly the same as that spoken by the Buddha in his lifetime, it is unlikely to be far removed from it. In fact the Buddha may well have taught in more than one dialect. According to tradition, he spent some forty-five years travelling over a wide area of northern India, speaking to people of all classes and backgrounds. Presumably he adapted the register and dialect of his speech according to his audience.29
As an educated man from an aristocratic family, the Buddha may well have known Sanskrit too; but if so he seems to have deliberately avoided using it as a teaching medium, presumably so that his teachings could reach the widest possible audience.
In its original language, the Pali Canon is called the Tipiṭaka, ‘Three Baskets’,30 because it consists of three large bodies of texts:
The Sutta Piṭaka is the largest and best-known of the Baskets: many of the Buddha’s most famous teachings come from this collection. It is itself divided up into five groups (nikāya), named according to the format of the texts within them:
In comparison with the other Nikāyas, the Khuddaka contains a high proportion of works in verse, many of which have a popular character. It consists of fifteen books, of which the Dhammapada is one: others include the Sutta Nipāta, which contains many of the best-loved chants and blessings of Buddhism, and the Udāna, closely related in format and history to the Dhammapada.31
The whole subject of the development of the early Buddhist schools is an intensely controversial matter, as well as a complex one, with ideas changing as new discoveries are made. There is no space here to cover the subject in the detail it deserves, but it is necessary to attempt a brief introduction in order to understand the world in which the Dhammapada literature took shape.
One obstacle to understanding lies in the terminology that has been used in much of the writing on the subject. Some earlier scholars used to use the word ‘Hīnayāna’ (‘Lesser Vehicle’) to refer to the early schools, even though this was a pejorative term invented by followers of the later Mahāyāna to distinguish these schools from their own ‘Great Vehicle’. In recent decades it has come to be felt that this is unacceptable, and the term is now generally (though not universally) avoided; but this still leaves the question of what we should call them. The alternative terms ‘Śrāvakayāna’ (‘The Vehicle of the Disciples’) and ‘non-Mahāyāna’, though less offensive, are still inadequate, since all define the Theravāda and its sister schools through Mahāyānist eyes.
These terms also reflect a degree of confusion between, on the one hand, the geographical and cultural varieties of Buddhism and, on the other, the varieties of individual practice taught within them. In a tradition common, probably, to all Buddhist groups, there are said to be three spiritual paths, each leading to its own kind of liberation: (1) the way of the follower of a (Fully Awakened) Buddha, either in that Buddha’s lifetime or through teaching handed down, leading to the liberation of the Arahat; (2) the way of individual practice, without such contact with a Buddha, leading to the liberation of the Paccekabuddha (‘Individual Buddha’ or ‘Private Buddha’); and (3) the way of the Bodhisatta, leading to the liberation of the Sammāsambuddha or Fully Awakened Buddha, capable of being a world teacher, just like the ‘Historical Buddha’. Though the Paccekabuddha and the Sammāsambuddha are said to have greater powers and attainments than the Arahat, all three are believed to have experienced a genuine awakening and release from suffering, from which the one who has attained it can never fall away. Each of the three kinds of enlightened beings may be described as a Buddha, or ‘Awakened One’, but when it is not further qualified the title generally refers to a Fully Awakened Buddha.
Properly speaking, the term ‘Śrāvakayāna’ refers to the first of these three paths to awakening; and the use of this term as a title for particular schools of Buddhism would seem to imply that those schools taught only the Arahat’s path, and not those of the Private Buddha and the Fully Awakened Buddha. Yet the early schools taught all three of these paths, and all three are still known in the surviving representative of these schools, modern Theravāda Buddhism. Here, the path followed by the individual Buddhist is thought to depend on decisions made in the course of his or her spiritual life (which for Buddhists, of course, will be thought to include earlier lives). But it is generally felt that the way leading to Arahatship is suitable for the largest number of meditators, while relatively few will feel the call to make the greater, and more prolonged, commitment required to follow the paths leading to awakening as a Private or a Fully Awakened Buddha.
The innovation in the Mahāyāna school was not, then, the teaching of the Bodhisatta path, but the fact that this was recommended as a goal for all meditators, not just a minority who felt a particular vocation for it. Along with this went a downgrading of the attainment of the Arahat, which was no longer necessarily regarded as irreversible. Other common ideas about the distinctive character of early Mahāyāna – for example, that it was more open to laypeople, or to women, than the older schools – have been convincingly challenged by Paul Harrison.32 For these reasons I prefer to follow him in calling the earliest pre- or non-Mahāyāna stages simply ‘Mainstream Buddhism’.33 This term is intended to reflect the situation just before and just after the start of the Common Era, and of course carries no implications about the mainstream character, or otherwise, of any later Buddhist schools, let alone of those in existence today.
The Mahāyāna branch separated from the Mainstream schools around the second century BCE, though the disputes that led to the split may have begun as much as two hundred years earlier. While all schools continued to accept the basic teachings of Buddhism, as expressed in their versions of the Canon, the Mahāyānists accepted in addition a number of later texts, such as the Prajñāpāramitā (‘Perfection of Wisdom’) Sūtras, which embodied distinctively Mahāyānist teachings. Though at first, judging by the evidence from inscriptions, and the reports of Chinese travellers, it was not very widespread,34 Mahāyāna Buddhism eventually became the dominant tradition in much of Asia, developing into numerous different forms, such as the Zen and Pure Land schools of East Asia. From Mahāyāna, in turn, came other developments, such as the Vajrayāna, the Tantric form of Buddhism, particularly influential in Tibet and related cultural areas. It is worth remarking, however, that, though Mahāyāna Vinaya texts certainly existed, and survive in fragments, the monks and nuns of all current Buddhist communities use Vinaya texts inherited from the Mainstream schools.
Mainstream Buddhism now survives as a single but very widespread school: the Theravāda of Sri Lanka and South East Asia (Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos). In ancient times, however, there are said to have been as many as eighteen or twenty Mainstream schools, of which the early Theravāda (sometimes called Vibhajjavāda (Vibhajyavāda), the Doctrine of Analysis) was just one. We have little information about most of them beyond their names, and brief mentions in the writings of other schools, so their teachings and history are often matters of debate. It appears that the differences between them could be based either on doctrine or on differing interpretations of the Vinaya, or on a combination of the two. Geographical factors also played their part, as different schools grew apart as they settled in different areas, or were influenced by the ideas and practices of their neighbours.
It is presumed that each of the Mainstream schools must once have had its own complete Canon; but the Pali Canon of the Theravādins is the only one to have survived complete, or practically so.35 Of the other early Canons, some are now known only through archaeological relics, fragments on materials such as birch bark found for example in Central Asia, in the caves of the Silk Route, where discoveries continue to be made. (The climate of India itself is not very kind to ancient manuscripts.) Parts of others have survived through being incorporated into the literature of later, Mahāyāna, schools, either as complete texts or as substantial quotations. Thomas Oberlies has made an indispensable survey of the early Mainstream literature currently known, in which he seeks to assign each surviving text or fragment to one of the schools that is known from literature or inscriptions.36
Whereas the texts of the Mainstream schools were composed in Middle Indian languages, the Mahāyāna texts seem generally to have been composed in Sanskrit; and by about the fourth century CE the older texts included in the Mahāyāna collections were being translated into Sanskrit too. Buddhist Sanskrit takes a wide variety of forms, which range from a fairly standard form of Sanskrit – not much more ‘unclassical’ than, for example, the language of the great epics37 – to a mixed language combining Sanskrit and Middle Indian elements. At its most extreme, the latter can resemble a language with Sanskrit word forms in a Prakrit grammar and syntax. Types of language towards this end of the spectrum are known to scholars as ‘Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit’.
From around the middle of the first millennium CE, as Mahāyāna Buddhism continued to spread outside India, the texts were further translated into non-Indian languages, including Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian. In many instances the Indian versions were subsequently lost, and the texts now survive only through the translations, particularly those in Tibetan or Chinese.
As far as can be ascertained, the structure of other Canons appears to have been similar to that of the Theravāda one, though it appears that there was a certain amount of variation, both in arrangement and in content.38 Of the large body of literature that must once have existed, certain kinds of texts have survived in multiple versions. There are a number of versions of Vinaya texts – not surprisingly, as each school would have been concerned with regulating the behaviour of its monks and nuns. And of the Sutta/Sūtra texts, there are a striking number of versions of the Dhammapada or closely related works, suggesting that the popularity of this kind of literature began very early, and continued after the development of Buddhism into different schools.
We currently know of three distinct versions of the Dhammapada in Middle Indian languages:
Belonging to the Theravāda school, this forms the main subject of this book. It contains 423 verses, arranged in 26 chapters. No name is recorded for its compiler. The chapters do not seem to be in any obvious order, for example in terms of length, though the last chapter, on ‘The Brahmin’,39 is much longer than any of the others. The oldest existing manuscripts date from around 1500 CE, but it is clear that the work was already being handed down in its present form, presumably in writing, at the time of the composition of the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā, around 500 CE.
Other Middle Indian versions are usually called ‘Dharmapada’, from the form of the name in Sanskrit and some Prakrits:40
We have the remains of two manuscripts of a Dharmapada in Gāndhārī, a Prakrit from Gandhāra (an area of what is now north-west India, Pakistan and a large part of Afghanistan). The first, and more substantial, version is the Khotan Dharmapada, usually known simply as the Gāndhārī Dharmapada. It survives as two portions of a single manuscript, found in Khotan, in Chinese Central Asia, in the 1890s and now divided between Paris and St Petersburg. Taken together, the portions appear to make up about five-eighths of the complete work: their condition suggests that the finder split up the original manuscript in order to sell it to two different collectors – with a big gap where he kept back a third part, hoping to find another buyer. When complete, the Khotan Dharmapada seems to have been in 26 chapters, arranged in order of length from the longest (on ‘The Brahmin’) to the shortest (title missing), and contained about 550 verses. The most up-to-date edition is still that of John Brough (Brough 1962), who also introduced it in his inimitable style. No translation appears to be available, but I have included a translation of an extract in Appendix I.
More recently, fragments were discovered of another version in Gāndhārī, now kept in the British Library and known as the London Dharmapada. It has been edited and translated by Timothy Lenz (Lenz 2003). It consists of a sequence of 13 verses, all of which are shared with the Khotan version, though with some slight changes in order. Most of them are on the theme of the snake that sloughs its skin (similar to the sequence from the Patna Dharmapada translated in Appendix II). It should be said, however, that the fragments are so tiny that in many cases one has to know what the verse ought to say before one can read it.
Both these manuscripts, written on birch bark in Kharoṣṭhī script, probably date from around the first century CE. The Khotan version is attributed, within the manuscript itself, to one Buddhavarman, but we do not know whether he was its editor or its compiler, or simply the copyist or even the owner of the copy.
The Gāndhārī Dharmapadas are believed to have belonged to the Dharmaguptaka sect, which was central to the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and China. It gave great importance to the ideal of the Bodhisatta, and contributed largely to what was to become the Mahāyāna tradition of Buddhism. Chinese monks and nuns still follow the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya.41
Since Gāndhārī was the language of a distinct political area, well away from the original centre of Buddhism, perhaps we should view the Gāndhārī texts as translations into another Prakrit rather than simply alternative versions.
This was reportedly found in a monastery in Tibet in the 1930s, and we can only hope that it is still there.43 All editors since then have worked from photographs taken at that time and kept in Patna, Bihar, in north-eastern India – hence the name. It is clearly not the most satisfactory arrangement. This is often described as a ‘Sanskrit’ or ‘Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit’ Dharmapada; but Lenz describes it more accurately as ‘a version written in a mixed dialect, showing Pāli, Prakrit and Sanskrit features’.44 It seems quite likely that some of the more Sanskritic elements, such as the language of the chapter titles, are the result of editing by the copyists, since the manuscript itself is rather late – eleventh or twelfth century CE: after the Middle Indian languages had fallen out of vernacular use.45 The Patna Dharmapada contains 414 verses, arranged in 22 chapters.
There is an excellent edition of this text by Margaret Cone, which originally formed part of her PhD thesis (Cone 1986) and was subsequently published as an edition of the Journal of the Pali Text Society (Cone 1989). A translation, included in the original thesis, sadly remains unpublished. I have included my own translation of one chapter of this text in Appendix II.
The Patna Dharmapada is plausibly attributed to the Sāmatiya sect,46 which belonged to the Pudgalavāda tradition of Buddhism. The Pudgalavādins reinterpreted the ‘no-self’ (anattā/anātman) doctrine of Buddhism in ways that were felt by other Buddhists to be dangerously close to rejecting it. Whereas other schools maintained strictly that our sense of ‘self’ is purely illusory, the Pudgalavādins taught that there was a subtle entity (pudgala, Pali puggala, ‘person’) that continued from life to life. Although Pudgalavāda Buddhism was extremely widespread in India when Buddhism was still strong there, none of its schools survive today.
With one small exception (see below), there are no surviving Sanskrit texts explicitly called ‘Dharmapada’: the equivalents surviving from the Sanskrit Canons are called ‘Udānavarga’. The reasons for this are unclear. The word udāna (which is the same in Sanskrit and Pali) is generally used in canonical literature to refer to inspired utterances of the Buddha, often, but not necessarily, in verse.47 So an Udānavarga (chapter of udānas) would be a collection of such utterances. In practice, the meanings of udāna and dhammapada would largely overlap: the utterances of the Buddha would certainly be words of dhamma, and vice versa.
The Pali Canon itself contains a text called the Udāna, part of the Khuddaka Nikāya. The Pali Udāna is of similar type to the Dhammapada, containing verses of the same kind, set in stories relating the circumstances in which they came to be spoken. (These resemble the ones in the Dhammapada Commentary, though without the background stories from previous lives.) However, it is a quite distinct text, sharing only a very few verses with the Dhammapada; and, although there is some overlap between the verses of the Sanskrit Udānavargas and the Pali Udāna, the Sanskrit Udānavargas resemble the Pali Dhammapada far more closely than they do the Pali Udāna.
The surviving Sanskrit Udānavarga texts seem to have belonged to the tradition of Buddhism called Sarvāstivāda, ‘the doctrine (vāda) that everything (sarva) is (asti)’, implying that past and future states exist in some subtle way within the present. The Sarvāstivādins had at least two versions of the Canon,48 each of which has left us an Udānavarga. The Sarvāstivāda tradition was strong in Central Asia and Tibet, and, like that of the Dharmaguptakas, played an important part in the development of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Monks in the Tibetan tradition still follow the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya.
One version of the Udānavarga is represented by an incomplete and much damaged manuscript in Brāhmī script on poplar wood from Subaši, north-east of Kucā in present-day China, and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. It dates from about the third–fourth century CE, and is in a distinctly non-classical form of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. It appears to have consisted of some 33 chapters, which may originally have contained over 600 verses. It has been published, with an introduction and notes in French, by H. Nakatani (1987), but there appears to be no translation available in a European language.
There is also a better-known Udānavarga composed in a more classical Sanskrit, represented now by various manuscripts and hundreds of fragments, as well as quotations in other works. The whole body of what survives has been edited by Franz Bernhard, with notes and introduction in German (Bernhard 1965–90). Again, there appears to be no translation available for this text. It is by far the longest of any of the surviving Dharmapada/Udānavarga texts, with some 971 verses in 33 chapters.
Verses in the Sanskrit Udānavarga often differ more markedly from their Pali equivalents than do those from the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit version. This generally appears to be because their compilers were more concerned with correct Sanskrit grammar and scansion, so that in translating them from whatever Middle Indian version they were using they had to adapt them to make them fit the metres of the verse.49 Here and there, however, the differences may reflect alternative understandings of the verses.
The Sanskrit Udānavarga appears to have been compiled around the fourth century CE, by Dharmatrāta. It is known to have had a commentary, the Udānavargavivaraṇa (‘Explanation of the Udānavarga’), by one Prajñāvarman, similar in format to the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā. This commentary has disappeared in its original Sanskrit, but survives in Chinese and Tibetan translations.
Yet another version, in what is very definitely a Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, is known from quotations in a Mahāyāna text called the Mahāvastu, a rare surviving text from the Lokottaravāda (or Lokuttaravāda) school.50 The word lokottara means ‘transcendent’ (loka-uttara, ‘beyond the world(s)’); and it is often confidently stated that the Lokottaravādins regarded the Buddha as an entirely transcendent being, and his actions in the human world as a show, created purely as a means of teaching. This position (comparable to the ‘Docetism’ of some early Christian sects) is indeed found in some later Mahāyānist schools, but it is probably anachronistic to read it into such an early phase of Buddhism. The issue referred to in the word lokottara seems in fact to have been the rather more subtle one of whether a Buddha’s speech, as well as his mind, was ‘transcendent’ and not subject to conditions.51 Since neither the Lokottaravādins themselves nor the larger Mahāsāṅghika tradition, to which they belonged, have left any contemporary descendants, the matter remains speculative.
The Mahāvastu (‘Great Story’), which forms part of a lost Vinaya Piṭaka, is a long retelling of the life story of the Buddha. It contains several quotations explicitly said to be taken from a ‘Dharmapada’. Generally these are single verses, all with equivalents in the Udānavarga, and one of which is found also in the Pali Dhammapada (v. 179).52 But there is one much longer passage, in which the Buddha goes to visit a group of aged ascetics and spurs them to attain Arahatship by teaching them in a sequence of verses corresponding to the ‘Thousands’ (Sahassa) chapter (Chapter 8) of the Pali Dhammapada.53 Interestingly, here the verses are also referred to as the ‘Thousands’, though the equivalent chapters of the Sanskrit and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Udānas are called ‘Repetition’ (Peyāla), rather than ‘Thousands’ (Sahasra). I have included a translation of this passage, with its frame story, in Appendix III.
The Mahāvastu contains a further extended verse passage in which the Buddha gives a teaching to a boatman on the river Gaṅgā, who thereupon becomes a monk.54 Many of the verses spoken there resemble ones in Dhammapada Chapter 25, ‘The Monk’ (Bhikkhu), including, appropriately, several variations on v. 369. Although this passage is not explicitly said to be from a Dharmapada, it seems more than likely that it is from the ‘Monk’ (Bhikṣu) chapter of such a text, as K. R. Norman suggests.55
The Mahāvastu in its present form is extremely difficult to date, with current estimates ranging from about the first to the fourth century CE. But in any case the sequences of verses quoted within it could well be considerably older.
There are four known Chinese translations or compilations of Dharmapada or Udāna material. Unlike the Indian versions, they are dated within the texts themselves. These dates are significant, because they show not only that the original text was in existence by then, but also that it was already sufficiently known and admired, even outside India, for people to want to translate it. A great deal of work remains to be done on these texts and their relationships, both between themselves and with their Indian originals, and few of them have been translated into any European language.
This (Taisho 210) was translated and compiled in 224 CE by Weizhinan of the Wu dynasty. The title is the Chinese equivalent of dhammapada. It consists of verses only, the central core being more or less a translation of the Pali Dhammapada, or some closely related version. (It is not unheard of for Chinese translators to have worked from a Middle Indian language rather than Sanskrit: many of the early Chinese translations of Buddhist texts were from Gāndhārī.) This core is extended at beginning and end with further material (about a third of the total length of the work) added from elsewhere.
There is a readable modern translation of this text by Ven. K. L. Dhammajoti (1995), which however includes only the core 26 chapters (of 39) most closely corresponding to the Pali Dhammapada; a translation of the rest is planned.
This (Taisho 211) was compiled by Faju and Fali of the Jin dynasty, between 290 and 306 CE. It consists of selected stanzas from the Fajü jing together with a commentary, including frame stories, apparently drawing on Indian sources.
Translations of extracts from this text can be found in Beal’s version (1878): there appears to be nothing more recent.
Made by Zhu Fonian of the Qin dynasty in 383 CE, this (Taisho 212) is a translation of an old version of the Udānavarga together with a lost commentary by Dharmatrāta.
This (Taisho 213) is a translation made by Tianxizai, between 980 and 999 CE, of the known Sanskrit Udānavarga, without a commentary.
The Tibetan version is called ched dubrjod pa’i tshoms, the Tibetan equivalent of udānavarga. It appears to have been translated by Vidyāprabhākara, around the ninth century CE, from the Sanskrit Udānavarga, together with Prajñāvarman’s commentary.
Somewhat confusingly, both translators of this version (Rockhill 1883 and Sparham 1983) entitle it ‘Dhammapada’, no doubt feeling that this would be more widely understood in the English-speaking world than ‘Udānavarga’.
Although the various versions of the Dharmapada literature can be assigned with more or less certainty to specific schools of early Buddhism, there appears to be no evidence that the differences between them reflect doctrinal differences between those schools. But we should probably not expect such differences. Unlike, for example, the Abhidharma texts, the Dharmapada literature is concerned not with the more debatable areas of Buddhist philosophy, but with themes common to all the Buddhist traditions, particularly those of generosity, morality, diligence in practice, and the central importance of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Saṅgha.
From this brief overview, it will be seen that, despite their many similarities, the various Dharmapadas and Udānavargas are all distinct texts. The format remains constant, with the evocative chapter headings and the themed chapters, but the headings themselves can vary, and even when they are similar their order is different. (In any case, as Margaret Cone has pointed out,56 some of the chapter headings are ones that we would expect to find in any compendium of Buddhist verse.) The different versions share a considerable body of verses, but the verses are not always assigned to the equivalent chapters within different versions. The lengths of the texts, when they were all complete, must have varied greatly, between the Sanskrit Udānavarga, with 971 verses in 33 chapters, and the Patna Dharmapada, with 414 verses in 22 chapters.
Clearly, some of the differences in length can be accounted for by repetition and expansion. For example, where the Pali Dhammapada has two verses (13–14):
As rain penetrates
An ill-roofed house,
Passion penetrates
An undeveloped mind.
As rain does not penetrate
A well-roofed house,
Passion does not penetrate
A well-developed mind,
the Patna Dharmapada has six (351–6) – three on the undeveloped and three on the well-developed mind, on the same pattern but with ‘passion’ replaced in subsequent verses by ‘ill will’ and ‘delusion’ – while the Udānavarga has twelve (31.11–22), with verses on ‘pride’, ‘greed’ and ‘craving’ added to the set. The format of the verses lends itself naturally to this kind of elaboration, and we can well imagine a monk adapting the verse to what he saw as the needs of a particular audience.
It is possible, indeed, that the order and number of verses assigned to different topics sometimes reflects local priorities; for example the prominence given to the chapter on ‘The Brahmin’ in the Gāndhārī Dharmapada may make us wonder whether there was a particular problem in that community with Brahmins who were trying to claim leadership on the strength of their birth, and needed to be reminded that, for Buddhists,
You don’t become a Brahmin
By matted locks, by lineage, or by caste:
If you drive away evils on every side,
Small ones and great,
Through driving away evils
You are called a Brahmin.
(Appendix I.1)
But, whatever allowances we make for such forms of change and elaboration, it is not possible to trace these Dharmapadas back to one common original. The most that we can be confident of is that the Middle Indian versions represent an earlier stage of the creation of this literature, while the Sanskrit Udānavarga in its 33-chapter form represents a later stage, when the process of collection and expansion has been going on longer. But there is no certainty as to whether the Pali Dhammapada, or any of the others, is closer to an ‘earliest’ or ‘most authentic’ form of the text.
It does seem certain, however, that the idea of a Dharmapada was an ancient one – earlier than the division of the Buddhist tradition into different schools. Brough raises the possibility that, after the split, one school may have made a collection of Dharmapada type, and that others had then made their own compilations ‘in order not to be outdone by their rivals’; but he at once dismisses this on the grounds that it would not produce the results that we actually find:
On the evidence of the texts themselves it is much more likely that the schools, in some manner or other, had inherited from the period before the schisms which separated them, a definite tradition of a Dharmapada-text which ought to be included in the canon, however fluctuating the contents of this text might have been, and however imprecise the concept even of a ‘canon’ at such an early period.57
This seems a fair statement, on the basis of the material that is currently known to us. More doubtful is Brough’s view that there are ‘a few traces of deliberate sectarian rivalry’ in the differences in arrangement between the Dharmapada texts:
But when the last three titles in the Pali, Taṇhā, Bhikkhu, and Brāhmaṇa … appear in inverse order as the first three of the Prakrit, we can hardly help thinking that this was done quite deliberately, in order to be different from a rival sect … It is not impossible, therefore, that in a few instances a verse might have been placed in a given chapter simply because some other sect preferred to have it in another.58
Margaret Cone comments:
Although it is feasible to suppose that the idea of a collection may have originated with one group, and that groups may have been influenced by what they heard others had done, there is no clear evidence of any closer relationship between any of the collections, not even of a deliberate difference in arrangement (although Brough … unconvincingly detects sectarian rivalry in the order of chapters in GDhp [the Gāndhārī Dharmapada]). With very few exceptions, each collection’s choice of arrangement is easily explained and justifiable.59
Indeed, however strong the rivalries may have been, the main motivation in putting together and ordering any of the collections must have been to preserve as fully and accurately as possible the words of the Buddha, as that was understood by the compilers. Sectarian point-scoring would surely have had a lower priority.
To summarize, then: there must once have been a large body of oral literature in the form of verses, commonly known and recited. Some of these, expressing well-known bits of folk wisdom, were not specific to Buddhism, and were liable to turn up in Jain and Hindu literature too. Others had a specifically Buddhist message. Collections of such verses were already in existence before the various splits that gave rise to the different Mainstream schools. Those who compiled them seem to have known them either as Dhammapada/Dharmapada or Udānavarga, titles which for practical purposes were nearly synonymous.
Meanwhile, other verses carried on being handed down separately, or were found scattered through other Buddhist texts. For some centuries, such verses continued to be added to the collections as they were handed on. In the case of the Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Chinese translations, the process carried on longest; but the compilers were still often drawing on material that was genuinely ancient. However, at some point in each tradition it was decided that the collection was complete, a discrete item in a Canon of recognized teachings of the Buddha.
Study of the Dharmapada literature raises many questions about the nature and history of the oral tradition in Buddhism. What, for example, does all this variation tell us about its traditional attribution to the Buddha himself? Clearly, it does not rule it out, since the Buddha must have spoken a great many verses over the course of his forty-five years of teaching. (At that period, verse would have been thought at least as natural as prose as a way of conveying information that needed to be memorized.) It would not be surprising if sometimes he used or adapted verses that already existed in popular lore, or reused ones that he had previously composed, with variations to suit a new context; nor if some of those verses then returned to the folk tradition, and turned up again elsewhere.
But of course it is highly probable that verses spoken by others have ended up being attributed to the Buddha. Indeed, there are traditional precedents for such attributions; for example, in the commentary on Dhammapada v. 421, the Buddha hears a report of a teaching given by the Arahat nun Dhammadinnā, on which he comments, ‘My daughter Dhammadinnā has explained it well: if I myself were to answer this question I would answer in just the same way.’ As a result, Dhammadinnā’s words are accounted ‘Buddha’s teaching’ rather than ‘Arahat’s teaching’.60 Such traditions would perhaps have made it acceptable up to a certain point to add new verses to the Dharmapada literature, so long as they were felt to have the authentic flavour of the Buddha’s teaching.
The name of the Commentary on the Pali Dhammapada, the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā, is simply the Pali for ‘Commentary on the Dhammapada’. Though not regarded as canonical, this Commentary is immensely popular. It includes some of the best-known stories61 of the life of the Buddha and his early followers, such as the tales of Aṅgulimāla, the murderous bandit who became an Arahat, and of Kisā Gotamī and the mustard seed. Many of these stories have an inspirational quality, reminding the reader of the example of the Buddha’s early followers, or warning against the errors of his opponents. Often, too, the Commentary seeks to describe the causes of these events, in terms of the actions of the characters in previous lives.62
The Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā was composed in what is now Sri Lanka, and was apparently largely based on material already existing in the vernacular language of the island, presumably a Sinhala Prakrit.63 It is attributed in one manuscript to the great commentator Buddhaghosa (fourth or fifth century CE).64 Though K. R. Norman seems on the whole to accept this attribution (albeit with reservations),65 other scholars have doubted it, preferring to date the Commentary a little later than Buddhaghosa.66 In any case, it was certainly written the better part of a millennium after the period in which the main stories are set. However, the actual custom of commentating on the Dhammapada verses must go back to their beginning, since some of them would be hard to understand without such a commentary, while a few would seem to be positively dangerous (e.g. vv. 97, 294–5). The Commentary draws on a wide range of material, including earlier canonical literature, and popular stories with a strong element of folklore (magic rings, self-filling rice pots, etc.). I have not translated the commentarial material, since to do so would have expanded this book to many times its present length;67 however, I have included summaries of the principal stories, since they are vital to our understanding of how the Dhammapada has been thought about and used in the Buddhist tradition – and how it continues to be used.
To get a flavour of the Commentary, it is worth seeing what the commentator has done with the two famous verses with which the Dhammapada begins:
manopubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā
manasā ce paduṭṭhena bhāsati vā karoti vā
tato naṃ dukkham anveti cakkaṃ va vahato padaṃ.
manopubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā
manasā ce pasannena bhāsati vā karoti vā
tato naṃ sukham anveti chāyā va anapāyinī.
Fore-run by mind are mental states,
Ruled by mind, made of mind.
If you speak or act
With corrupt mind,
Suffering follows you,
As the wheel the foot of the ox.
Fore-run by mind are mental states,
Ruled by mind, made of mind.
If you speak or act
With clear mind,
Happiness follows you,
Like a shadow that does not depart.
This is a clear statement of the law of kamma, as it is understood in the Buddhist tradition: that it is the intention with which an act is performed that causes its consequences. The stories in the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā are chosen to reinforce this message. That accompanying the first verse concerns a blind monk who is an Arahat. One day as he walks he is seen to be crushing many small insects under his feet; but because of his blindness he does not realize it. His fellow monks complain to the Buddha that he has committed the severe offence of taking life – enough to warrant expulsion from the Order. But the Buddha explains that, as there was no intention to kill, the monk has committed no fault.
The story on the second verse concerns a sick youth who is the son of a miser. The father refuses to spend money on a doctor until it is too late, and the boy dies; but, because he has mentally taken refuge in the Buddha, he is reborn in a heavenly state. Appearing to his former father in his divine new form, he causes him to mend his ways.
These are the bare bones of the stories, and their message seems clear; but, in the Commentary as we have it, the first story in particular is much elaborated. In it, we hear of two brothers, Mahāpāla and Cullapāla.68 Mahāpāla becomes a monk in middle age, and makes a determination to spend the vassa (the three-month retreat of the rainy season) without lying down, sitting up even to sleep – a form of ascetic practice. But he contracts an eye disease. A physician prescribes an ointment, but instructs him to lie down while he uses it: if he does not do so, says the doctor, he will certainly go blind. Even after three separate warnings, Mahāpāla refuses this advice and keeps to his vow. He loses his sight, but gains Arahatship at the same moment.
The other monks wish to know the reason for this, and the Buddha explains that in a previous existence Mahāpāla was a physician. A poor woman came to him for a cure for an eye disease; she promised that, if he were to cure her, she and her children would become his slaves. But when she recovered she did not want to keep her word, so she pretended that the medicine had not worked after all. Then the physician in revenge gave her another ointment, which made her go blind. As a result of this, he became blind in a number of later existences – yet another illustration of kamma in action.
What one feels about the likelihood of all this will depend, of course, on one’s own views about kamma and rebirth. But, as a story, it seems so grim that it threatens to overbalance the message of the verses. Moreover, persisting in a vow at the cost of losing one’s eyesight does not seem entirely in keeping with the Middle Way, which shuns the extreme of asceticism as well as that of self-indulgence. But I do not think the commentator is prescribing such a course of action for the reader (or hearer): rather, he is setting up an extreme example of one of the Buddhist virtues, the perfection of commitment or adhiṭṭhāna, just as the Jātaka tales tell of extreme acts of generosity or self-sacrifice in the previous lives of the Buddha. And the idea that a person may give up physical sight to gain a higher kind of vision seems to have an archetypal resonance: we may think, for example, of the Norse god Odin, who sacrificed one of his eyes to drink from the spring of wisdom. There is also the consolatory aspect, found in many of these stories, that, despite his wicked action in a previous life, with all its heavy consequences, Mahāpāla in his last life was able to overcome all his defilements and attain the perfect peace and freedom of Arahatship.
A similar pair of verses is found in the other extant Dharmapadas, though not generally at the beginning. We find them in the Sanskrit Udānavarga (31.23–4) and the (Khotan) Gāndhārī Dharmapada (201–2), in both cases with variant readings: in place of ‘made of mind’ (Pali manomayā) we have ‘swift as mind’ (Sanskrit manojavāḥ, Gāndhārī maṇojava), and in place of ‘Like a shadow that does not depart’ (Pali chāyā va anapāyinī) we have ‘Like a pursuing shadow’ (Sanskrit chāyā vā hy anugāminī, Gāndhārī chaya va aṇukamiṇi).69
According to the Chinese commentary translated by Beal (1878), and based presumably on that of Prajñāvarman, the verses refer to two young merchants who hear the Buddha’s teaching, but respond to it in different ways. One rejects it, gets drunk, and goes to sleep by the roadside, with the result that in the morning he is killed by the wheels of the other merchants’ wagons. The other is more moderate in his drinking, and is protected as he sleeps by the Four Kings, the guardian deities of the four directions. He is taken up by a wealthy merchant, who has noticed that the shadow of a tree continues to fall on him even when the sun has moved round the sky – a story told elsewhere of the Buddha-to-be as he meditates under a rose-apple tree while still a boy. So the second merchant goes on to make his fortune.
In this case, the stories seem to have been made up on the basis of the verses (perhaps even slightly mistranslated or misunderstood),70 rather than the other way round. But elsewhere the Chinese commentaries (which, as we have seen, date from roughly the same period as the existing Pali one) seem to have preserved understandings that have been lost in the Pali version.71
Though perhaps we should not make too much of this until more research has been done on the Chinese commentarial literature, the stories presumably also reflect the circumstances in which they were told. While a monk teaching in Sri Lanka would draw on stories of the monastic life there, and the agricultural community that surrounded him, one who was teaching in towns on the Silk Route might well draw on tales of merchants and travellers – people like many of those in his audience.72 But both would also have had memories well stocked with accounts, from the early Canons and elsewhere, of the life of the Buddha and the first men and women who followed him.
The story of Mahāpāla illustrates an important theme in the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā: the moment of realization of one of the higher states, as the mind becomes successively free from the ‘fetters’ (saṃyojana): the state of the Stream-Enterer (whose mind is for the first time turned unalterably towards liberation), Once-Returner, Non-Returner, or Arahat – the last being a fully liberated being, freed from all fetters and no longer liable to fall into states such as fear, anger or desire. This liberation does not make him or her a colourless character, and the Arahats in these stories all have their own qualities and special talents. For example, although Arahats are by definition free from fear, in the story accompanying v. 177 the former bandit Aṅgulimāla is shown to have a special power over wild elephants, perhaps because he has made a particular effort to develop loving kindness. Certain of the Arahats and other leading followers of the Buddha appear repeatedly in the Commentary: among them are the two chief monks Sāriputta, noted for his wisdom, and Moggallāna, noted for his psychic powers; Ānanda, the Buddha’s faithful attendant; and the generous lay followers Anāthapiṇḍika and Visākhā. These and many others clearly had a firm place in popular consciousness, and were instantly recognized when they appeared as characters in these stories.73
Among all the doubts about the relationships between the different versions of the Dhammapada and Udānavarga, one thing remains clear: this literature was immensely popular. It was loved, memorized and commented on in widely diverse countries and languages, and in many different schools of Buddhism; and it continues to be so.74 Today, the Pali Dhammapada is still one of the most read and quoted Buddhist texts, within the Theravādin community and outside it. So it is worth considering the nature of its appeal.
John Brough, the editor of the Gāndhārī Dharmapada, was less than enthusiastic about the qualities of the Dharmapada texts as literature:
In cultural conditions where the cliché, and particularly the religious cliché, was not so much tolerated as venerated, and where many existing verses could with the greatest of ease be broken into usable quarters, it is understandable that a considerable treasure-house of versified tags was ready to hand for any monk zealous to compose. Now and then a monk might be a poet, and here and there among the Dharmapada verses we have the good fortune to inherit some fragments of excellent poetry. But we should not expect to find very much. Poetry is not an easy art, and good poets are always rare. To build from other men’s bricks and sanctified clichés is tolerably simple; and many a monk entirely devoid of poetic ability was readily persuaded that his verses were no worse than those of his neighbour.
The resulting vast accumulations of insipid mediocrity which piety preserves are by no means peculiar to Buddhism … Buddhism has its own share of great art; but we do no service to Buddhism or to its genuine art if we magnify the literary worth of a text beyond its deserts … Distinguished scholars (not themselves Buddhists) have indeed written with liberal hyperbole of the ‘profound moral value’ of the Pali Dhammapada, and have rated it among the masterpieces of Indian literature. Here I politely dissent. Those who write in this way can hardly have made any serious comparison with great literature; nor could anyone with a sense of literary values describe the whole collection in terms scarcely merited by its best parts, if he had himself lived day and night close enough to these verses for long enough to arrive at an assessment of his own disencumbered of hearsay.75
But since I too have now spent a certain amount of time with these verses, I feel emboldened to disagree with my first Professor of Sanskrit. Clearly, taste is at issue here, and no doubt John Brough was temperamentally attracted to polished, classical works of literature, of the kind that he himself translated in his wonderful Poems from the Sanskrit (1968). But the Dhammapada, in all its forms, retains a strong kinship with oral literature.
Few, I think, would deny that oral literature can have its own masterpieces: we need only think of folk ballads such as ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ or lyrics such as ‘The Lyke-Wake Dirge’. No one thinks it is a blemish in such works if they contain repetitions or set phrases. For that matter, I doubt whether anyone thinks the worse of Homer because of his use of such set expressions as ‘the wine-dark sea’ or ‘wily Odysseus’, designed to fit as neatly into the Greek hexameter line as ‘that one I call a Brahmin’ (tam ahaṃ brūmi brāhmaṇaṃ) does into the śloka.76 On the contrary, they are rightly regarded as part of his charm.
The Dhammapada originated in an age when verse was the main means of retaining and handing on knowledge, and its primary purpose was to convey its message in clear, memorable terms. In this it succeeds admirably. Indeed, if one has lived with it for a while, it becomes quite difficult not to keep quoting it. There is its realistic attitude to unfair criticism (vv. 227–8):
This is an ancient truth, Atula,
Not just for today:
Folk blame the one who sits silent;
They blame the one who says a lot;
They blame the one who says little, too –
No one in this world is not blamed.
There never was, there never will be,
Nor is there found today
A person who is altogether blamed
Or altogether praised.
On the ways in which quarrels, between people or nations, are perpetuated, and the only way to end them (vv. 3–5):
‘He insulted me, he struck me,
He defeated me, he robbed me’:
For those who get caught up in this,
Hatred does not cease.
‘He insulted me, he struck me,
He defeated me, he robbed me’:
For those who do not get caught up in this,
Hatred ceases completely.
For never here
Do hatreds cease by hatred.
By freedom from hatred they cease:
This is a perennial truth.
On the devastating way in which death intervenes in human plans (v. 47):
While a man gathers flowers,
His mind attached to this and that,
Death carries him away
As great a flood takes a sleeping village.
Its earthy, proverbial-sounding verses on the perils of adultery (vv. 309–10) seem to me very far from Brough’s ‘other men’s bricks and sanctified clichés’:
Four things happen to the reckless man
Who goes with the wife of another:
Ill fortune earned; disturbed sleep;
Third, blame; and fourth, a hell world –
Ill fortune earned, and an evil destination:
Small pleasure for frightened man with frightened woman –
And the king imposes a heavy punishment.
So a man shouldn’t go with the wife of another.
In the original, the whole rhythm of the verses (the longer triṣṭubh-jagati77 rather than the śloka) suggests agitation, and in line 2 of the second verse the masculine and feminine forms of bhīta, ‘frightened’, seem to huddle together as though listening for an angry husband coming home:
cattāri ṭhānāni naro pamatto
āpajjati paradārūpasevī:
apuññalābhaṃ na nikāmaseyyaṃ
nindaṃ tatīyaṃ nirayaṃ catutthaṃ,
apuññalābho ca gatī ca pāpikā
bhītassa bhītāya ratī ca thokikā
rājā ca daṇḍaṃ garukaṃ paṇeti,
tasmā naro paradāraṃ na seve.
(The inflected nature of Pali enables the poet to vary the word-order without obscuring the meaning of the sentence.)
The imagery of the Dhammapada tends to be simple and immediate. Many of its similes are taken from nature: from the sun, moon and weather; from rocks, mountains and lakes. Various trees and plants are mentioned, each with associations familiar to the original hearer, just as a reader of English poetry would recognize the distinct characters and associations of the oak, yew, lily or rose. We hear of the bamboo, which flowers rarely and then dies; of the sweet-scented jasmine; and of course of the lotus, which grows pure and fragrant out of muddy water. Among animals, we hear of migrating geese, of herons fishing in ponds, of monkeys, hares, spiders and bees – the last being pointed out as the model for the way in which a monk should live, supported by his lay followers, but not exploiting them (v. 49):
In the village, a sage should go about
Like a bee, which, not harming
Flower, colour or scent,
Flies off with the nectar.
There are numerous references to domesticated creatures such as cattle, horses and mules.78 The elephant, a much-loved animal, has a chapter of its own (Chapter 23).
There are many references to the world of work. Farming (particularly cattle-keeping) naturally predominates, but we find references also to craft skills such as carpentry (vv. 80, 145), arrow-making (vv. 80, 145), silversmithing (v. 239) and garland-making (vv. 44–5, 53).79 From the less respectable parts of society, we hear of the cheating gambler (v. 252) and the professional criminal (v. 97).
The arts of war provide a useful source of similes for the resolution and skills necessary for the meditator who seeks to conquer the defilements. We hear, for example, of the need to guard one’s own actions as one would guard a border town (v. 315). In battle, the bow is the principal weapon (indeed the only one mentioned in the Dhammapada). A warrior might ride into battle on horseback, on an elephant, or (like the heroes of the Mahābhārata) in a chariot – in which case the charioteer also plays a vital part, controlling the horses so that the warrior can use his weapons (vv. 94, 222).
Secular power is embodied in the king and his officers, while the religious establishment is represented by the Brahmins, the priestly class who are responsible for carrying on the ritual practices based on the traditions of the Vedas. But outside the settled life of the household there is another class of religious practitioner, who has (at least in theory) given up all worldly ties. Such wanderers, often called samaṇa (Sanskrit śramaṇa),80 are of many kinds, some of them following extreme ascetic practices, wandering naked, or eating next to nothing. The Buddhist monks (bhikkhu)81 are marked out by their shaven heads and their yellow or orange robes. They are enjoined not to follow such extreme practices, but to live in a modest, disciplined way, striving ceaselessly towards liberation. The Dhammapada has strong warnings for those monks who wear the robe and accept the alms of lay supporters but do not practise as they should (v. 308). Though the monastic life is regarded as particularly conducive to spiritual attainment (v. 99), we are reminded that those living the household life may also reach such attainments (v. 142).
The existence of gods and other non-human beings is taken for granted. Normally they are mentioned in a general way, as a group (vv. 94, 420), but a few are mentioned by name, notably Maghavan (known elsewhere as Sakka), the king of the gods (v. 30), and Brahmā, a deity of the higher realms (vv. 105, 230).82 The forces that bind beings to saṃsāra – the realm of rebirth – are embodied in the figure of Māra, the tempter (vv. 7–8, 34, 37, 40, 46, 57, 105, 175, 274, 276, 337, 350). Death, the inevitable consequence of living in that realm, is also personified (vv. 46–8, 170, 287), and often identified with the god Yama, in myth the ruler and judge of the dead (vv. 44–5, 235, 237).
Although the gods are thought to have far longer and happier lives than human beings, their condition is not fundamentally different from our own: indeed, human beings can win divine status in a future life through morality and generosity (vv. 30, 224). All conditioned states, including existences in heaven or hell worlds, are impermanent, and the state of a liberated human being is greater than that of any deity (cf. vv. 94, 105, 230).
The dangers and seductions of saṃsāra are portrayed as fever (v. 90), poison (vv. 123–4), captivity (v. 346), or the threat of attack from bandits (v. 123). Its suffering is compared to that of a fish on land (v. 34) or of birds caught in a net (v. 174). The quest for liberation is often pictured, naturally, as a path to be followed (Chapter 20, passim), or as a river to be crossed (vv. 85–6). More unexpectedly, perhaps, the understanding that comes (or not) as one tries to live the spiritual life can be expressed in terms of something as simple and homely as eating soup (vv. 64–5):
Even if lifelong
A fool attends upon a wise man,
He no more knows dhammas
Than a spoon knows the flavours of soup.
Even if for a moment
An intelligent man attends upon a wise man,
He quickly knows dhammas
As the tongue knows the flavours of soup.
The basic simplicity of the Dhammapada style does not exclude certain kinds of artfulness, including word games and puns of an extremely elaborate kind (see the section on ‘Translating the Dhammapada’, below). But most characteristic is a straightforwardness of word and thought that yet suggests great possibilities for reflection, as we see in the famous summary of the teaching of the Buddhas – not just one, but all Awakened Ones (v. 183):
Not to do any evil;
To undertake what is good;
To purify your own mind:
This is the teaching of the Buddhas.
sabbapāpassa akaraṇaṃ kusalassa upasampadā
sacittapariyodapanaṃ etaṃ buddhāna sāsanaṃ.
At such moments, the Pali Dhammapada has a lean, spare beauty that is all its own.
There have been countless translations of the Pali Dhammapada. It is generally stated that the first version in a European language was a Latin version, published in 1855, by the pioneering Danish scholar Michael Viggo Fausbøll, which in turn profoundly influenced the first English translation, by the great Max Müller, published in the series ‘The Sacred Books of the East’ in 1881.
This is probably true if we consider only translations of the complete text. However, both Fausbøll and Müller acknowledge a debt to an earlier English version, by the Revd Daniel John Gogerly, a London-born Methodist missionary to Sri Lanka, who was also a serious scholar of Pali and Buddhism. Gogerly’s version, of the first eighteen of the twenty-six chapters, was originally published in 1840 in a Methodist journal called The Friend.83 Despite some misunderstandings of Buddhist philosophy, Gogerly shows a sympathy, remarkable for his time, for the ethical teachings of the Dhammapada, and his work deserves not to be forgotten.
Since the age of these pioneers, the Dhammapada has been translated into a remarkable number of languages. An exhibition of manuscripts and published editions of Buddhist texts held at the Staatsbibliothek, Munich, in 2005 included a translation into Polish, dated 1925, one into Yiddish, dated 1958, and one into Turkish, dated 1982.84 There have also been numerous versions in English, many of them still in print – which naturally leads to the question of why it seemed necessary to undertake a new one.
The existing versions tend to fall into two main categories. On the one hand are those designed primarily for devotional purposes, aimed at committed Buddhists – the sort of book that a Buddhist might keep on his or her bedside table for inspiration. In this type of translation, explanations of doubtful points tend to be traditionally based.85 Other versions have a more scholarly flavour, but are still firmly rooted within the Pali commentarial tradition. A particularly fine example of this kind of translation is that of J. R. Carter and M. Palihawadana (1987). On the other hand there are the academic translations, of which the great current example is that of K. R. Norman (The Word of the Doctrine, 1997), which draws on the latest scholarship on the Dhammapada and the related texts. It is an awe-inspiring work of scholarship, but its renderings are highly literal, and its style is not aimed at the general reader.
Both Carter and Palihawadana’s and Norman’s translations – and numerous others, listed in the Bibliography – have been indispensable to me in working on the text. But it still seemed to me that there was room for a new translation, drawing on up-to-date scholarship but combining it with readability. I also wanted to provide some sense of the body of literature to which the Pali Dhammapada belonged, giving the general reader some access to such works as the Gāndhārī and the Patna Dharmapadas, of which there are either no translations at all or ones available only in specialist academic works. So in a series of appendices following the main body of the book I have included translations of extracts from three other extant versions.
In producing the present translation, my first aim was of course to express as accurately as possible the meaning of the original text, as far as we can currently ascertain it. But, along with this, I was also concerned to convey, if I could, something of the feeling of the original, the way in which it would have struck its early hearers in the Pali – something that is perhaps even harder to ascertain, but that still seemed worthwhile to attempt.
In the first place, this meant that I was committed to a verse translation, whereas most previous versions of the Dhammapada have been in prose. A rhymed version, or any other formal type of English verse, would have been impossible while retaining the nuances of meaning, but I have tried to represent the form and feeling of the verses in stanzas of free verse of a similar shape to the originals. So where the original verse has four pādas, I have used four lines; where it has six pādas, six lines. But the content is not necessarily divided up between the lines in the same way as it divides between the pādas in Pali: the syntax of the two languages is so different that to attempt to do this would create a forced or unnatural effect.
The Dhammapada presents a number of special challenges to the translator. Pali, like other ancient Indian languages, reflects a culture with different assumptions from the modern English-speaking world (even including modern India). Often, to make sense of a verse for the contemporary reader, I have had to add a word or two implied, but not stated, in the original. Where I have done this, I have mentioned the fact in the notes.
I wanted to keep the plain-spoken, sometimes even colloquial, feeling of the original, and to avoid writing ‘Buddhist Hybrid English’86 – that language in which things are never ‘lucky’ or ‘good’, always ‘auspicious’ or ‘meritorious’. I also wanted to avoid scattering the text with untranslated Pali terminology; but in some cases there is simply no single English equivalent for a Pali term. A particularly difficult case is dhamma, which has a number of technical meanings, ranging from ‘mental state’ (or even ‘thing’) to the Dhamma – the teaching of the Buddhas. Even when the word is used in the former senses, however, there is still a sense that the ‘small-d’ dhamma is an instance or expression of the ‘capital-d’ Dhamma. In the translation, where there is a usable English equivalent I have translated the ‘small-d’ dhamma with the meaning that it bears in its context, while leaving the ‘capital-d’ Dhamma as it is. It should be remarked, however, that Pali in its original scripts has no equivalent of upper- and lower-case letters, so this too may sometimes be a matter of interpretation. So again I have mentioned such decisions in the notes.
Although I have tried to keep close to the structures of the original, there are many usages in Pali that, though possible, would be awkward in English, giving the impression that the original was awkward too, rather than clear and lucid as it generally is. One particularly pressing question was how to translate impersonal constructions, which are far more common in Pali than in English. The ‘one’ construction tends to sound over-formal, or even clumsy, in verse, and current spoken English prefers ‘you’. So, after considerable reflection, I decided that I would normally translate such constructions with ‘you’: ‘you should make an effort’ rather than ‘one should make an effort.’ There seemed little danger of causing misunderstanding, since in the Dhammapada there generally is an element of advice or warning to the hearer in such expressions; but, for those who are happier knowing such things, where the ‘you’ is a genuine second-person form – with the Buddha addressing some person or group of people – I have mentioned the fact in the notes.
The Dhammapada also makes frequent use of a structure in which a verb is expressed once, but is meant to be understood two or three times; for example, in its very first verse, we have
Suffering follows you,
As the wheel the foot of the ox.
Here I felt that the reader would readily understand the last line to mean ‘as the wheel [follows] the foot of the ox [that draws the cart]’, so I have kept the usage – especially as the language of the poem itself here feels a little unusual and arresting. But elsewhere I have adapted it to what I have felt would be the current English usage, by adding the verb that is to be understood. For example, for v. 252 I have written
Others’ faults are easy to see,
While your own are hard to see.
The faults of others
You winnow like chaff;
You hide your own
As a cunning gambler hides a bad throw
rather than
. . . . . .
As a cunning gambler a bad throw.
Pali also makes great use of constructions involving the ‘absolutive’ or ‘indeclinable participle’: ‘having done this, one is freed.’ Where I have felt that English would more naturally say ‘if you do this, you’ll be freed,’ this is how I have translated it. Similarly, I have often translated passive verbs (‘this is done by me’) into the active (‘I do this’).
A particular problem in translating the Dhammapada is its fondness for puns, which in ancient India could be used as a means of conveying serious truths: see for example the complex plays on words for ‘wood’ and ‘desire’ in vv. 283–4, 344. A Tudor poet might just have managed to make something of this (perhaps speaking of the ‘woodness’, i.e. madness, of desire); in modern English, however, puns are primarily viewed as a way of making jokes, and I have scarcely attempted to reproduce them, except in a very limited way (see vv. 256–7). Generally I have had to settle on one of the meanings for the translation, and explain the rest in the notes. The culminating horror for the translator is v. 97, with a sequence of epithets which apply, on the surface, to a master criminal, but on deeper reflection to an enlightened saint. In this case the only solution I could find was to provide two complete translations, with explanations in the notes.
But, despite the above, the most pervasive challenge of all in translating the Dhammapada is its sheer straightforwardness. There are some verses of great simplicity which are immensely touching in the original, but quite impossible to translate without losing most of their power – for example vv. 42–3:
Whatever an enemy can do to an enemy,
Or a rival to a rival,
A wrongly directed mind
Will do worse to you than that.
What mother or father cannot do,
Or any other kin,
A rightly directed mind
Will do better for you than that.
diso disaṃ yan taṃ kayirā
verī vā pana verinaṃ
micchāpaṇihitaṃ cittaṃ
pāpiyo naṃ tato kare.
na taṃ mātā pitā kayirā
aññe vāpi ca ñātakā
sammāpaṇihitaṃ cittaṃ
seyyaso naṃ tato kare.
With no similes or ornaments and the plainest of vocabulary, these verses leave the translator absolutely nowhere to hide. In the original, they are capable of bringing a tear to the eye; but it would be too much to expect a translation to do the same.
I hope, however, that, in order to experience this work to best effect, the reader will pause from time to time and speak some of the verses aloud. This was, after all, how the original was meant to be experienced; and in my translation I have tried to be true to that fact.
1. Since these works were transmitted orally, perhaps for some centuries, before being put into writing, the word ‘literature’ in this context is not meant to be restricted to things which were written down.
2. On the life of the Buddha, see below.
3. Some have also sensed a pun on dhammapatha, ‘way or path of the dhamma’, but this seems less likely (Mizuno 1979: 255–6).
4. For example K. R. Norman’s translation (Norman 1997) bears the title The Word of the Doctrine. However, this follows the general practice of the Pali Text Society, in which editions of original texts are called by their Pali titles, and translations have their titles translated into English.
5. Theravāda (Sanskrit Sthaviravāda), ‘The Doctrine of the Elders’, also known as the Southern school, has long been the predominant form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand, with communities also in Laos, Malaysia and Bangladesh, and now a following in the West. For more on the Theravāda traditions, see below.
6. Or one of his followers spoke it with the Buddha’s endorsement. For more on the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā, see below, ‘Commentaries’.
7. Pali vatta or anuṭṭhubha; but the Sanskrit terms are more widely understood. This verse form could be said to be the equivalent in Sanskrit and Pali of the iambic pentameter in English.
8. And such a trial to the translator: see e.g. v. 97 and notes, and vv. 283–4 and notes. (Puns may also have been intended in places where they are no longer readily detected: for a likely example, see vv. 44–5 and notes.)
9. See for example the notes on v. 175.
10. I have noted a few such examples (e.g. vv. 70, 109, 131, 200, notes), but have not attempted to be comprehensive.
11. For the version found in the Dhammapada Commentary, see the notes on vv. 11–12.
12. In Sanskrit, Śākya – hence the title, often used of the Buddha in Mahāyāna texts, of Śākyamuni, ‘Sage of the Śākyas’.
13. In Sanskrit, Siddhārtha Gautama. Siddhattha means ‘[He] who has accomplished his aim’; Gotama is the name of his family’s gotta or lineage. It remains unclear why the Sākiyas, a proudly Khattiya clan, claimed membership of a Brahmin gotta (see the notes to v. 393). Their marriages were certainly not arranged according to Brahmanical gotta rules.
14. The later commentaries call her Yasodharā (Sanskrit Yaśodharā), ‘Fame-bearer’, but canonical texts use other names, most often simply ‘the Mother of Rāhula’.
15. However, the Dīgha Nikāya (2.23–30, from Sutta 14, the Mahāpadāna Sutta) describes such a series of encounters in the early life of a previous Buddha, Vipassin.
16. Since we are told elsewhere (e.g. Dīgha Nikāya 2.14; Sutta 14: Mahāpadāna Sutta) that his mother, Māyādevī, had died shortly after his birth, the ‘mother’ referred to here must be his stepmother, Mahāpajāpati (Sanskrit Mahāprajāpatī/Mahāprajāvatī), who brought him up as her own.
17. Majjhima Nikāya 1.161–75, esp. 1.163–73 (Sutta 26: Ariyapariyesanā Sutta); ibid. 1.238–51, esp. 1.241–51 (Sutta 36: Mahāsaccaka Sutta).
18. The accounts of his struggles in terms of the attack by Māra are found first in the commentaries: see the story segment of the notes on vv. 11–12.
19. Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta, found in both the Vinaya Piṭaka (Vinaya 1.10–12) and the Sutta Piṭaka (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56.11).
20. For specialist terms see the Glossary.
21. Dīgha Nikāya 2.72–168 (Sutta 16: Mahāparinibbāna Sutta).
22. vaya-dhammā saṅkhārā. appamādena sampādetha. A powerful saying that does not lend itself easily to translation. ‘Saṅkhāras are vaya-dhamma [i.e having the nature (dhamma) of passing away (vaya)]. Bring about success by means of awareness [appamāda – see the notes for Chapter 2].’
23. Dates are given in the form BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era), rather than BC and AD.
24. For recent thinking on the dates of the Buddha see Bechert 1991–7, Cousins 1996 and Prebish 2008.
25. Dīpavaṃsa 20.20–21: see K. R. Norman 1983: 10–11, Roth 2000: 64. The idea that a council was held for this purpose is debatable.
26. I am grateful to L. S. Cousins for this observation.
27. The word ‘Prakrit’ (Sanskrit prākṛta) denotes a vernacular language, as distinct from Sanskrit (saṃskṛta, ‘perfected’), the language of culture. Though Pali certainly belongs in that category, it is often treated as distinct from other Middle Indian languages, in expressions such as ‘Prakrit and Pali’.
28. However, the language of the Pali texts differs in a number of ways from the language of surviving inscriptions from that area, generally known as ‘Māgadhī’. Māgadhī has some distinctive features, such as the use of ‘l’ in certain positions where other Middle Indian languages, including Pali, would normally have ‘r’. Some ‘Māgadhisms’ are preserved in the Pali Canon, along with forms from other early dialects (K. R. Norman, 1983: 4–5).
29. See further K. R. Norman 1980, and, for another view, Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, <http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.intro.than.html>, section on ‘Historical Notes’.
30. Sanskrit Tripiṭaka. As is usual in discussing Theravāda Buddhism and its texts, where the Pali and Sanskrit forms of a word differ, I use the Pali form: hence dhamma rather than dharma, nibbāna rather than nirvāṇa. (Some words, such as buddha, literally, ‘awakened one’, and vinaya, ‘discipline’, are the same in both languages.) The Sanskrit alternatives are given in the Glossary, for those who are more accustomed to seeing them.
31. Though this is now the most widely accepted arrangement, historically there have been others, including one in which both the Vinaya and the Abhidhamma texts were included in the Khuddaka Nikāya (Norman 1983, 8).
32. Harrison 1987.
33. Harrison 2005: 168, 169.
34. Harrison 1987: 80.
35. There is a little room for doubt, because two later Pali works, the Nettippakaraṇa and the Peṭakopadesa, thought to have been written around the start of the Common Era, illustrate their arguments by quoting extracts from the Pali Canon. Among these are a number of passages that are no longer present in the Pali Canon as we have it – many of them verses of Dhammapada type. Some, however, consider that these texts were drawing on another version of the Canon.
36. Oberlies 2003–4.
37. The great Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, contain a large number of non-standard grammatical forms, suggesting their own strong links with the oral tradition.
38. The Sanskrit equivalents of the various parts of the Tipiṭaka/ Tripiṭaka are: (1) Vinaya Piṭaka; (2) Sūtra Piṭaka; (3) Abhidharma Piṭaka. In the Mahāyāna schools, the constituent parts of the Sūtra Piṭaka were generally called āgama (‘tradition’) rather than nikāya: the Dīrghāgama, Madhyamāgama, Saṃyuktāgama, Ekottarāgama/Ekottarikāgama (ekottara/ekottarikā, ‘more by one’) and Kṣudraka. (The term nikāya is still found within the Mahāyāna texts, and āgama within the Theravāda, but as less common alternatives.) Not all Canons had Kṣudraka as a separate Āgama: some placed their Kṣudraka-type material elsewhere.
39. I have used the older Anglicized form ‘Brahmin’ in preference to the more correct ‘Brāhmaṇa’ in the present work because it seemed to fit more happily into the verse of the translation itself, where it is many times repeated. Once I had made that decision, it seemed better to use it in the Introduction too, to avoid the confusion of having two different translations for the same word.
40. The variant spelling ‘Dharmmapada’ is also frequently found in manuscripts.
41. Indeed, the Dharmaguptaka lineage has achieved a certain prominence in recent years, since it is the only one that appears to have retained an unbroken tradition of Bhikṣuṇī ordination – bhikṣuṇī (Pali bhikkhunī) meaning a fully ordained nun. According to most traditions, a bhikṣuṇī could be ordained only by a Buddha (see the story for v. 391) or by a quorum of existing bhikṣuṇīs in association with the monks, not by monks alone. So in modern times some women from other Buddhist traditions have gone to the Chinese nuns for ordination, while continuing to follow their own doctrinal traditions.
42. Skilling (1997) prefers to call it the Patna Dhammapada, because dhamma is the form used in the body of the text.
43. There is some doubt about its present whereabouts: see Roth 2000: 5–6, 91–2. Facsimiles of the manuscript are included at the end of the same book (plates 2–14).
44. Timothy Lenz, with contributions by Andrew Glass and Bhikshu Dharmamitra, A New Version of the Gāndhārī Dharmapada and a Collection of Previous-Birth Stories: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments 16 + 25 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2003), p. 12.
45. The Prakrits seem to have been falling out of use – or, rather, developing into later languages called Apabhraṃśas – by around the fourth–sixth century CE.
46. By Peter Skilling (1997). The name of this school is found in a number of variants, including ‘Sāṃmatīya’ (Skilling’s preferred spelling).
47. It is perhaps related to udāna, ‘up-breath’, one of the five ‘breaths’ of ancient Indian physiology (Roebuck 2000: xviii; 2003: xxx–xxxi and references given there). In this case, it would resemble the Western idea of ‘inspiration’, but seen as coming up from within the speaker rather than down from above.
48. Some have taken references in texts to ‘Mūlasarvāstivāda’ (‘Root-Sarvāstivāda’) to refer to a separate school; but Fumio Enomoto (2000) has convincingly demonstrated that this is simply an honorific name for the Sarvāstivāda school itself. (See also Fuktta 2003: xxi.)
49. Cone 1986: lviii.
50. Lokottara is the Sanskrit, lokuttara the Middle Indian form. The Lokottaravāda was an offshoot of the Mahāsāṅghika (‘of the Great Order’), the earliest proto-Mahāyānist movement to have broken away from the early Mainstream schools in the disputes that led to the development of the Mahāyāna schools.
51. The point at issue in these controversies is the nature of a Fully Awakened Buddha after his attainment of liberation but before his parinibbāna. How far is he part of the transcendent (lokuttara) realm, and how far is he still part of the worldly (lokiya) realm of saṃsāra, where existence is shaped by conditions and is subject to suffering (dukkha)? The various schools tried to answer this question, according to their own interpretations of Abhidhamma philosophy, in relation to the triad of body, speech and mind. According to Mainstream Buddhist ideas, the body of the Buddha is still in some sense part of the conditioned realm, since it is subject to old age, illness and death, but his mind is completely free of it. For example when the Buddha was wounded by Devadatta’s rock (v. 90, story), he felt physical pain, conditioned by the injury, but he did not experience mental anguish conditioned by that, as hatred, aversion etc. could no longer arise in his mind. The question of speech was a particularly knotty one, since the acts of speaking and hearing are in part physical, but the thought that inspires them may be transcendent. Unlike the Theravādins, the Lokuttaravādins seem to have held that the Buddha’s speech was entirely lokuttara, regardless of whether he was teaching the Dhamma or speaking of everyday matters. For these and related controversies, see Cousins 1991.
52. See v. 179 and note.
53. Mahāvastu 3.434–7.
54. Ibid. 3.421–3.
55. K. R. Norman 1983: 60 and notes.
56. Cone 1986: lix.
57. Brough 1962: 27.
58. Ibid.: 28–9.
59. Cone 1986: lix.
60. They are included in the Majjhima Nikāya (1.299–304; Sutta 44: Cūḷavedalla Sutta).
61. I use the words ‘story’ and ‘tale’ as literary terms for this kind of narrative, with no implications as to whether or not they are ‘true’ in a historical sense. (In fact I think it likely that many of these narratives had a factual basis; but, since on the whole they concern the kind of people who do not leave archaeological records, we are unlikely ever to know how much.)
62. There is therefore some overlap with the Jātaka, the collection of stories of previous births of the Buddha found in the Khuddaka Nikāya. However, these two sources do not always agree on which ‘stories of the present’ link with which stories of previous lives. (On Jātaka stories, see Shaw 2006b.)
63. Carter and Palihawadana 1987: 3–6.
64. Perhaps best known as the author of the Visuddhimagga, ‘The Path of Purification’, a manual for meditators (Ñāṇamoli 1975).
65. K. R. Norman 1983: 121.
66. Buddhaghosa’s own date is slightly doubtful. Since there is a late-fifth century Chinese translation of the commentary on the Vinaya, definitely attributed to him, he cannot be later than that date, but he could be earlier. The safest suggestion would seem to be that he was active around the late fourth century CE.
67. The English translation of the Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā, Burlingame’s Buddhist Legends, comes to three substantial volumes (Burlingame 1921): it is concerned with the stories, and omits the material explaining the meaning of each verse. Carter and Palihawadana (1987) translate the commentarial explanations of the meaning of the verses, but omit the stories.
68. ‘Big Protector’ and ‘Little Protector’. The adjectives mahā and culla (also spelled cūḷa or cūla), ‘great’ and ‘small’, are often prefixed to the names of older and younger brothers and sisters (cf. notes on vv. 18, 25), though mahā is also used to distinguish great persons such as Arahats from others with the same name (e.g. Mahā Moggallāna, Mahā Kassapa).
69. The equivalent is also found in Pali in the Peṭakopadesa version: see note 35, above.
70. Though the Fajü jing, as translated by Dhammajoti (1995: 104), seems to remain close to the Pali version:
Mind is the origin of events
They have] mind as the chief, and are mind-impelled.
If one harbours an evil thought in the mind
And then speaks or acts;
Suffering pursues one necessarily,
As a cart [necessarily] rolls over the track.
Mind is the origin of events
They have] mind as the chief, and are mind-impelled.
If one harbours a good thought in the mind
And then speaks or acts;
Happiness pursues one necessarily,
As a shadow [necessarily] follows its substance.
71. See for example the notes on v. 97.
72. Carter and Palihawadana (1987: 6–7) comment on the effect of the background on the Commentary, but with reference to the explanations of the meanings of the verses rather than the stories: ‘Another area for further inquiry is the extent to which the commentary “reduces” the sense of the Dhammapada verses and offers a narrow monastic meaning, addressed primarily to bhikkhus (buddhist monks), or a sectarian meaning attuned exclusively to the teachings of the Theravada school.’
73. I have included some of the frequently occurring names in the Glossary, but for comprehensive information on all the proper names in the Pali Canon and commentaries, see Malalasekhara 1937–8. The online version is particularly useful to the non-specialist reader, since it is organized in the order of the Roman alphabet, while the print version uses Pali word-order.
74. For some of the translations of the Dhammapada into different Western languages, see Grönbold and Dachs 2005: 140ff.
75. Brough 1962: xxi. He does go on to concede that ‘a reasonable critic will readily admit that there are many attractive things here’ and that it is not nearly so bad as what he calls ‘the unrelieved doggerel of the Dharma-samuccaya’ (ibid.), a later text with related content.
76. See the notes on vv. 385–6.
77. Pali tiṭṭhubha-jagatī – but the Sanskrit terms are generally used.
78. If we include the rest of the Dharmapada literature, the range of animals mentioned becomes wider. In the Udānavarga, for example, we find mentions of the lion, deer and tortoise, among others. The snake – surprisingly absent from the Pali Dhammapada – seems to put in an appearance in most of the other extant Dharmapadas, and has its own chapter in the Patna Dharmapada (see Appendix II). Interestingly, there seems to be no mention of the smaller domestic animals, the dog, cat or mongoose, or even of the talking birds often kept as pets in classical India. (In the Dhammapada Commentary, all sorts of animals appear, including dogs and cats – the former generally as working animals kept by huntsmen.)
79. We also find the potter’s wares, which would have been ubiquitous in ancient India (vv. 40, 121–2), but no reference to their making. However the Udānavarga (1.12) has the potter, too:
Just like a clay vessel
Made by a potter,
Each life of a mortal
Ends in breaking.
80. Literally, ‘striver’, and possibly the origin of the (adopted) English word ‘shaman’. (The word appears to have spread in its Prakrit form, śamaṇa, under Buddhist influence, into the languages of Central Asia, from which it entered Chinese (as shamen) and Japanese (as shamon). It is thought to have entered English via Tungus and Russian; but the matter remains controversial. (See Carmen Blacker, The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), pp. 23, 317–18.)
81. There is no specific mention in the text of nuns (bhikkhunī), though they play a prominent part in the Commentary.
82. Or perhaps one of a class of deities described as living in their own high heavens, the ‘Formless Realms’.
83. D. J. Gogerly, ‘The Dhammapada or “Footsteps of Religion” ’, first published in 1840 in the journal The Friend in Colombo, and reprinted in A. S. Bishop (ed.), Ceylon Buddhism: Being the Collected Writings of Daniel John Gogerly, 2 vols. (Colombo: The Wesleyan Methodist Bookroom; London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1908), II, 249–92. This version is also available at <http://www.bodhgayanews.net/pdf/gogerly_dhammapada.pdf>. For other translations by Gogerly see <http://www.sacred-texts.com/journals/ja/tbg.htm>.
84. Grönbold and Dachs 2005: 140ff.
85. One that I have found particularly helpful is that of Narada Thera (1993).
86. Paul Griffiths (1981) has an excellent analysis of the problem, though I do not agree with his solution, which is to edit and study, rather than translate, the more intractable texts. In my experience, there are few better ways of studying a text than trying to translate it.