Pali Canon

“ For the believer performs an act—to wit, the invocation of Amitâbha—to which has been attached the wonderful result that the performer is reborn in a blessed state. This is not essentially different from the idea found in the Pali Canon that attentions paid to a Buddha may be rewarded by a happy rebirth in heaven. ”

“ The later phases of Buddhism, described as Mahâyâna, show this feature among many others, that the supernatural and mythological side of religion becomes prominent. Gods or angels play an increasingly important part, the Buddha himself becomes a being superior to all gods, and Buddhas, gods and saints perform at every turn feats for which miracle seems too modest a name. The object of the present chapter is to trace the early stages of these beliefs, for they are found in the Pali Canon, although it is not until later that they overgrow and hide the temple in whose walls they are rooted. ”

“ And they were doubtless accompanied from the first, as they were being taught, by a running commentary. About one hundred years after the Buddha’s death there was a schism in the community. Each of the two schools kept an arrangement of the canon—still in Pāli, or some allied dialect. Sanskrit was not used for any Buddhist works till long afterwards, and never used at all, so far as is known, for the canonical books. ”

“ The extensive Sanskrit literature, which has reached in translations China, Japan and Java, is chiefly theological and poetical, history being conspicuously absent. India has also a considerable medieval and modern literature in various languages. Pali, though only a form of Hindu literature, has a separate history, for it died in India and was preserved in Ceylon, whence it was imported to Burma and Siam as the language of religion. The Pali versions of Buddha’s discourses are among the most remarkable products of Asia. ”

“ PALI, the language used in daily intercourse between cultured people in the north of India from the 7th century B.C. It continued to be used throughout India and its confines as a literary language for about a thousand years, and is still, though in a continually decreasing degree, the literary language of Burma, Siam, and Ceylon. Two factors combined to give Pali its importance as one of the few great literary languages of the world: the one political, the other religious. ”

“ As European thought does not class all these items under one heading or, in other words, has no idea equivalent to Sankhâra, it is not surprising that no adequate rendering has been found, especially as Buddhism regards everything as mere becoming, not fixed existence, and hence does not distinguish sharply between a process and a result—between the act of preparing and a preparation. Conformations, confections, syntheses, co-efficients, tendencies, potentialities have all been used as equivalents but I propose to use the Pali word as a rule. ”

“ Thus the Sanskrit sūtra, “thread,” and dharma, “duty,” become sutta and dhamma respectively, while vidyut, “lightning,” is transformed into vijju. The particular form of the popular language which became the sacred idiom of Southern Buddhism is known by the name of Pāli. Its original home is still uncertain, but its existence as early as the third century B.C. is proved beyond the range of doubt by the numerous rock and pillar inscriptions of Açoka. ”

“ The works on religion and philosophy especially will be of as much service for the history of ideas in these later periods as the publication of the canonical books has already been for the earlier period to which they refer. The Pali books written in Ceylon, Burma and Siam will be our best and oldest, and in many respects our only, authorities for the sociology and politics, the literature and the religion, of their respective countries. ”

“ The evidences used have been both literary and monumental. For the collection of literary evidences I have had to be at great pains in ransacking the vast field of Sanskrit literature as well as Pali (especially the Jātakas) throughout which they are scattered, and then in piecing the evidences together. The Sanskrit texts, as well as the Pali, I have studied both in the original and in translations. ”

“ And they said also, “Peace be unto thee, O thou chosen one of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, thou blessed father, Abba Pawli (Paul) , thou man of God; the angels rejoice with thee, for thou shalt rejoice in the kingdom of the heavens. Darkness hath left thee and they shall take thee to the country of light; sorrow hath left thee, and they shall take thee to the joy, which is forever. Blessed art thou in thy generation, O thou Pawli (Paul) , the desert monk, thou man of God, thou Pawli (Paul) , the desert monk.” ”

“ Ox., Hebrew scholar; a writer in Ceylon civil service 1860, private secretary to the governor Sir Charles McCarthy 3 years; office assistant to government agent in Kandy to March 1864 when he returned home; sub-librarian at India office, London 1872; professor of Pali and Buddhist literature at Univ. coll. London, July 1873 to death; published Pali text of the Khadduka Patha with English translation and notes in Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, Nov. 1869 being the first Pali text printed in England; Dictionary of the Pali language 2 vols. ”

“ XXX, nine of which are taken from the [Pg 375] collection known as Paritta. The names and dates of the translators are not given but the existence of these translations probably indicates that a knowledge of Pali lingered on in Magadha later than is generally supposed. It will also be remembered that about A.D. 1000, Atîśa though a Tantrist, studied in Burma and presumably came in contact with Pali literature. Rockhill notes that the Tanjur contains a commentary on the Lotus Sûtra written by Prithivibandhu, a monk from Ceylon, and Pali manuscripts have been found in Nepal [985] . ”

“ It is like those we have seen at Benares and Allahabad, only this one is of more ancient date, being 2200 years old. The Lat is a single shaft of sandstone tapering very slightly towards the top. The inscription in Pali, the oldest language in India, is almost illegible, but it consists of "certain edicts for the [325] furtherance of religion and virtue, enacted by a king called Dhumma Asoka Piyadasi," who must have changed his character after ascending the throne, which he only reached by the murder of the ninety relations who had prior claims. ”

“ Kâli worship is not a necessary step in any religion. The Upanishads teach us all there is of religion. Kali worship is my special fad; you never heard me preach it, or read of my preaching it in India. I only preach what is good for universal humanity. ”

“ It was composed on the basis of earlier works written in Sinhalese, which are now lost, having been supplanted by the chronicles and commentaries in which their contents were restated in Pali in the course of the 5th century. The particular one on which our Mahāvaṃsa was mainly based was also called the Mahāvaṃsa, and was written in Sinhalese prose with Pali memorial verse interspersed. The extant Pali work gives legends of the Buddha and the genealogy of his family; a sketch of the history of India down to Asoka; an account of Buddhism in India down to the same date ”

“ The second is Buddhadatta, who wrote the Jinālankāra in the 5th century A.D. It has been edited and translated by Professor J. Gray. It is a poem, of no great interest, on the life of the Buddha.
The whole of these Pali books composed in India have been lost there. They have been preserved for us by the unbroken succession of Pali scholars in Ceylon and Burma. These scholars (most of them members of the Buddhist Order, but many of them laymen) not only copied and recopied the Indian Pali books, but wrote a very large number themselves. ”

“ But we have something like contemporary evidence of the Great Council, held at Pâṭaliputra, 246 B.C., in which the sacred canon of the Buddhist scriptures was settled, and at the end of which missionaries were chosen and sent forth to preach the new doctrine, not only in India, but far beyond the frontiers of that vast country.5 We possess inscriptions containing the edicts of the king who was to Buddhism what Constantine was to Christianity, who broke with the traditions of the old religion of the Brahmans, and recognized the doctrines of Buddha as the state religion of India. ”

“ In the days of the Buddha it had long given place to various vernaculars grown out of it: Pali, and what are called the Prakrits.—We have lost memory of what I may call the archetypal languages of Europe: the common ancestor of the Celtic group, for instance; or that Italian from which Latin and the lost Oscan and Savellian and the rest sprang. No matter; they remain in the ideal world, and I doubt not in the course of our cyclic evolution we shall return to them, take them up, and pass through them again. ”

“ The student feels himself ushered into a new region; he is doomed to find his way by groping. Finally, the false position assumed by the Indian philosophers, and the false conclusions they arrive at, contribute to render more complicated the task of elucidating this portion of the Buddhist system. That the difficulties may be somewhat lessened, and the pathway rendered less rugged and a little smooth, the writer proposes to avoid as much as it is in his power overcharging with Pali terms the explanations he is about to afford, under the guidance of the Buddhist author. ”

“ In India when a young boy or girl happens to break, in eating or dress, the orthodox rules of caste, his or her parents will say, 'Oh! it is all the result of the Kali yuga.' If a Hindu becomes a convert to any other religion, or if any atrocious act is committed, the Hindu will observe, 'Oh! it is the ripening of Kali.' Every deviation from the established custom, every vice, every crime, in fact, everything wicked, is set down by the ordinary Hindu to the ascending power of the Lord of the Kali age. ”

“ They come from a country and a people to which the Indian world look up with sentiments of deference. The apostles came forth amongst the Gentiles under no other name than that of Jews, which was precisely the character they despised and derided. If it be disgraceful in India to become a Christian, it could not be much less so to be enrolled amongst those "quos, per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat." If the religion which they had to encounter be considered, the difference, I apprehend, will not be great. ”

“ There are translations into Singhalese of the greater part of its contents, and so attractive are its narratives that the natives will listen the livelong night to recitations from its pages. [1]
1: HARDY'S Buddhism, ch. v. p. 98.
The other Pali works [1] embrace subjects in connection with cosmography and the Buddhist theories of the universe; the distinctions of caste, topographical narratives, a few disquisitions on medicine, and books which, like the Milindaprasna, or "Questions of Milinda," [2] without being canonical give an orthodox summary of the national religion. ”

“ It has to be specially and particularly noted that লিট্, লঙ্ and লুঙ্ forms do not only exist in the early পালি forms but their use in Pali, unlike what we have noted just now in the Brāhmaṇa literature is much after the Vedic use: the supposed irregularities in the Vedic speech, have been artificially avoided in the Brāhmaṇa literature by framing some generalized rules. ”

“ In some measure, then, we understand how Hindu polytheism, theism, and pantheism are related to each other; we realise in some measure the openness of the Indian mind, and we now ask ourselves how far the Christian doctrine of God has impressed itself upon that open mind. Of the polytheistic masses it has already been pointed out that intelligent individuals will now readily acknowledge that there is truly one God only. ”

“ There are the pantheism of certain Hindu ascetics, the polytheism of the masses, the animism of aboriginal races, and the varieties of theism of Christians, Mahomedans, and the new Hindus respectively. There are the curious phenomena of goddesses as well as gods, and of distinctive features in the character and worship of the female deities. There is the whole scale of worship up from bloody sacrifices and self-tortures and from worship where the priest is everything, to worship like that of Mahomedans and of Protestant Christians, where a mediatory priesthood is virtually repudiated. ”

“ May you be blessed with health for many years to come!”
“Listen to me Queen!" said the monk “although my life is devoted to religion, I am now like the setting sun.” He then began an eloquent exposition of the teachings of Buddha regarding the cause of birth, ignorance, good and evil deeds and their consequences. He exhorted the Queen and all who listened to him to keep in the path of virtue: and turning to Manimêkalai, he said, “you young maid, who know your former birth! you shall have to learn first the doctrines of other creeds, and then I shall teach you the principles of Buddhism.” ”

“ It is the practice, therefore, of different sects and individuals, to attach themselves to the service of one or more of their deities, to wear a mark on their forehead as the badge of their sect, to devote themselves in a special manner to their worship, and to look to them for protection. Of the great triad, Brahma is not worshipped, having been cursed for telling a lie; no temple is dedicated to him, no sacrifice offered before him. Siva and Vishnu divide the mass of the people into two great parties. ”