If the Culla vagga account is accepted, it would appear that at this Council, expressly held by the Emperor for the consecrative settlement of the holy texts, the five Nikāyas or divisions which constitute the second Basket formed the subject of discussion between the President Kassappa and Buddha's favourite pupil Ānanda. The Dhammapada is a book of the fifth Nikāya. The Mahāvansa (Ch. v, 68) carries it back a few years earlier than the Council, to the time of the Emperor's conversion to the Buddhist faith, for on that occasion his teacher, Nigrodha, is said to have explained to him the Appamāda-vagga, which is the second chapter of the work. It was therefore known in the middle or early part of the third century B.C.
It seems to be an Anthology, prepared for the use of the faithful, of verses believed to be the real words of Buddha, short improvisations in which he expressed striking thoughts and embellished his preaching. They were current among the early Buddhists, and have been culled from the other scriptures as of high ethical and spiritual value. The importance of the Dhammapada for a critical study of Buddhism is thus considerable.
For a thorough understanding of the work and of the orthodox Buddhist view of it, it should be studied with the valuable commentary of Buddhaghosa. Buddhism owes a profound debt to this great man, and has recognised it in the name by which he is known in the Buddhist world. Says the Mahāvansa (Ch. xxxvii, 174): "Because he was as profound in his eloquence (ghosa) as Buddha himself, they conferred on him the appellation of Buddha-ghosa (the Voice of Buddha), and throughout the world he became as renowned as Buddha." He was an Indian Brahmana and a great Vedic scholar and apostle. On his conversion to Buddhism he became a not less ardent champion of the new Faith. He came to Ceylon from the cradle of Buddhism, "the terrace of the great Bo-tree" in Buddha Gāya, in the beginning of the fifth century, i.e., nearly a thousand years after Buddha's death. He came in search of the old commentaries on the Tripiṭakas. The commentaries had been brought to Ceylon by the Emperor Asoka's son, the apostle Mahinda, and by him translated into Sinhalese. They continued to be orally transmitted until reduced to writing, in the reign of the Ceylon king, Vaṭṭāgamini (88-76 B.C.), at a convocation of learned bhikkhus at the cave-temple of Alu Vihāre in the Matale district.
The original Pali version having perished in India, Buddhaghosa, during his residence in the Mahā-vihāre at Anuradhapura, re-translated it from Sinhalese to Pali. His version supplanted the Sinhalese (since lost) and is now the only record remaining of the ancient tradition. He also wrote elaborate commentaries (Aṭṭha kathā)[2] on almost every part of the Tri-piṭaka and composed the Visuddhi magga, an extensive and systematic treatise on Buddhist doctrine, a veritable cyclopædia of Buddhist theology. His writings are regarded as absolute authorities in the interpretation of the Buddhist scriptures, and he is regarded as the second founder of Buddhism in Ceylon. He is held in high reverence also in Burma as the founder of Buddhism in that country (450 of the Christian era), having taken the Buddhist scriptures there from Ceylon.
Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Dhammapada mentions the occasions on which, and the audiences to whom, most of the verses were addressed by Buddha when, as an itinerant preacher, he went with his followers through the land—mid-Ganges valley and sub-Himalayan tract in the modern provinces of Agra, Oude and Behar; his watchwords—not wealth, fame or dominion, but peace, happiness, deliverance from the burden of sorrow and death, and his message: "Open ye your ears, the deliverance from death is found."[3]
When he first attained enlightenment under the Bodhi-tree (at Buddha Gāya), a descendant of which still flourishes in Anuradhapura, the oldest historical tree in the world, Buddha is said to have broken out into a song of triumph which is included in the anthology of the Dhammapada (153-4) and has been spiritedly rendered by Mr. Woodward:
Through many a round of birth and death I ran,
Nor found the builder that I sought. Life's stream
Is birth and death and birth with sorrow filled.
Now house-holder, thou'rt seen! no more shalt build!
Broken are all thy rafters, split thy beam!
All that made up this mortal self is gone;
Mind hath slain craving. I have crossed the stream!
The way that he claimed to have discovered is known as the Middle Way (Majjhimā Paṭipadā), equally removed from an ignoble life of pleasure and a gloomy life of mortification, and consists in a realisation of the Four Great Truths (cattāri ariya saccāni) of suffering, its origin, its end and the path thereto. All existence, he declares, is suffering, its origin is desire, its end is the extinction of desire, to be attained by the Eightfold Path (aṭṭhangiko maggo) of right belief, right resolve, right speech, right act, right occupation, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration and tranquillity.[4] The exposition and illustration of the Truths and the Way fill numerous tomes of the Buddhist scriptures.
It is these ideals of self-control, self-culture and heroic endeavour, the graces of wisdom, purity and love, the eternal law of Karma, or causality and moral retribution—under which every deed, good or bad, comes back most to the doer and yields fruit, helping or marring his progress—that are enshrined in the Dhammapada in luminous, pithy verse which lingers in the memory as a fountain of noble inspiration. They are almost too ethereal for human nature's daily food, and it is granted to few to realise in actual life these counsels of perfection unaided.
Buddha failed to make allowance for the weakness of humanity. His stoic agnosticism and self-reliant courage ignored God, denied the soul, repudiated worship and prayer and made man the master of his fate. This line of thought was not new to India, however stamped with his own personality. But human needs and aspirations have asserted themselves, and Buddhism has been compelled to absorb elements of doctrine and practice which he condemned. This has happened, especially, in the countries where the doctrine of the Mahāyāna (the Great Vehicle) prevails.