The value of this Second Edition is greatly enhanced by the addition of many posthumous papers, discovered by the Editor, Dr. E. West, at Munich. They consist of further translations from the Zend and Pahlavi of the Zend-Avesta, and also of numerous detailed notes descriptive of some of the Parsi ceremonies.
Post 8vo, cloth, pp. viii.-176, price 7s. 6d.
TEXTS FROM THE BUDDHIST CANON
COMMONLY KNOWN AS “DHAMMAPADA.”
With Accompanying Narratives.
Translated from the Chinese by S. BEAL, B.A., Professor of Chinese, University College, London.
Among the great body of books comprising the Chinese Buddhist Canon, presented by the Japanese Government to the Library of the India Office, Mr. Beal discovered a work bearing the title of “Law Verses, or Scriptural Texts,” which on examination was seen to resemble the Pali version of Dhammapada in many particulars. It was further discovered that the original recension of the Pali Text found its way into China in the Third Century (A.D.), where the work of translation was finished, and afterwards thirteen additional sections added. The Dhammapada, as hitherto known by the Pali Text Edition, as edited by Fausböll, by Max Müller’s English, and Albrecht Weber’s German translations, consists only of twenty-six chapters or sections, whilst the Chinese version, or rather recension, as now translated by Mr. Beal, consists of thirty-nine sections. The students of Pali who possess Fausböll’s Text, or either of the above-named translations, will therefore needs want Mr. Beal’s English rendering of the Chinese version; the thirteen above-named additional sections not being accessible to them in any other form; for, even if they understand Chinese, the Chinese original would be unobtainable by them.
“Mr. Beal, by making it accessible in an English dress, has added to the great services he has already rendered to the comparative study of religious history.”—Academy.
“Valuable as exhibiting the doctrine of the Buddhists in its purest, least adulterated, form, it brings the modern reader face to face with that simple creed and rule of conduct which won its way over the minds of myriads, and which is now nominally professed by [145] millions, who have overlaid its austere simplicity with innumerable ceremonies, forgotten its maxims, perverted its teaching, and so inverted its leading principle that a religion whose founder denied a God, now worships that founder as a god himself.”—Scotsman.