North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

the text in a dialect different from the Pāli. At the first look the matter seems to be different in the label treated under B 51 viz. yaṁ bramano avayesi jatakaṁ’, for the first three words came from the Gāthā, that is to say, from the text of the canon. In Pāli we have yaṁ brāhmaṇa avādesi. The original text probably read bāhane instead of brāhmaṇo, and for avādesi certainly avāyesi. Now today, we know how the Sanskrit translations of the canonical texts were made: countless Prakritisms were at first simply taken over and only gradually later on substituted by correct Sanskrit forms. The Pāli translators have worked apparently in the same way. Avāyesi was kept at first and only later on corrected to the right Pāli form avādesi; bāhane was translated by bramhano, and bramhano was later on, not only here but in the whole sphere of Pāli literature, Substituted by brāhmaṇo which is not at all a real dialectal form, but, as the hm shows, simply taken over from Sanskrit. From that label we can only draw the conclusion that in the 2nd cent. B.C. the text of the Pāli canon showed more Eastern forms than today.

   The inscription A 56 shows that at the time of the construction of the railing a Buddhist canon was in existence, for the donor of a rail-bar, the venerable Jāta, is designated as peṭakin a ‘knower of the Piṭakas’. This, by itself, would not mean that Jāta studied the Pāli Tipiṭaka of the Theras, as the canon of other schools also consisted of Piṭakas. In Sārnāth, Set Mahet, and Mathurā we have inscriptions of donations from the time of Kanishka and Huvishka^[2] in which the monk Bala calls himself trepiṭaka, and his pupil, Buddhamitrā, trepiṭikā. As Bala uses Sanskrit full of Prakritism in his inscriptions, his Tripiṭaka will also have been composed in this language. But in the inscription No. A 57 a certain Budharakhita^[3] is mentioned, who receives the designation paṁchanekāyika^[4] that is ‘knowing the five Nikāyas’. The five Nikāyas must be the five divisions of the Suttapiṭaka in the Pāli canon^[5], for only here the division into five Nikāyas occurs. In the canons of the other schools, as is well-known, āgama is used instead of nikāya. Whether the contents of the five Nikāyas, especially those of the Khuddakanikāya, were at that time exactly the same as in the Pāli canon of today is a question in which we need not enter here.^[6] In any case the expression paṁchanekāyika confirms that the Pāli canon was in existence in the 2nd cent. B.C. in Western India. The probability that the artists of Bhārhut followed the texts of this canon is highly strengthened by this fact.
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^[1]The missing of the length of vowels is naturally only graphic; bramano seems to be incomplete writing for bramhano.
^[2]List Nos. 925-927; 918; 38.
^[3]Buddharakkhita is naturally a monk even if he is not called a bhikkhu in the inscription; he is not a layman as Barua JPASB., New Ser. XIX, p. 358 supposes.
^[4]The same title is received by the monk Devagiri in the Sāñchī inscription 299, Mil. 22 mentions side by side tepiṭakā bhikkhū pañchanekāyikā pi cha chatunekāyikā cheva.
^[5]According to Buddhaghosa, DA., p. 22 f., DhsA., p. 26; Samantap. (Vin. III, p. 291), the whole of the Tipiṭaka indeed is divided into five Nikāyas. According to him the Vinayapiṭaka and Abhidhammapiṭaka belong to the Khudakanipāta. This conception occurs also in the Gandhavaṁsa (JPTS. 1886, p. 57) which is probably composed not earlier than the 17th cent., but it can impossibly be the original. It is shown clearly by the terminology itself that the Vinayapiṭaka and the Abhidhammapiṭaka were coordinated with the Suttapiṭaka. In the account of the council at Rājagaha found in Chullav. II, 1, 7 ff., the pañcha nikāyā are obviously confronted as texts of the Dhamma with the ubhatovinayā as the texts of the Vinaya. Cf. Przyluski, Le concile de Rājagṛha, Paris 1926, p. 338.
^[6]In Mil. 341 f. the inhabitants of the Dhammanagara are enumerated as suttantikā, venayikā, ābhidhammikā, dhammakathikā, jātakabhāṇakā, dīghabhāṇakā, majjhimabhāṇakā, samyuttabhāṇakā, aṅguttarabhāṇakā, khuddakabhāṇakā. I do not believe that it can be concluded from the juxtaposition of the jātakabhāṇakā and the khuddakabhāṇakā that the author did not look upon the Jātaka book as a part of the khuddakanikāya, or even as Barua JPASB., N.S. XIX. p. 363 thinks, that a special collection of the commentorial Jātakas besides the collection contained in the Khuddakanikāya was in existence. The reciters of the Jātakas are mentioned especially after the preachers of sermons probably because both address themselves chiefly to the laymen whereas the expositions of the Nikāyas may have been meant principally for the monks.