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Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa

Translated from Pali : Bhikkhu Nanamoli

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

         Originally I made this translation for my own instruction because the only published version was then no longer obtainable. So it was not done with any intention at all of publication; but rather it grew together out of notes made on some of the book’s passages. By the end of 1953 it had been completed, more or less, and put aside. Early in the following year a suggestion to publish it was put to me, and I eventually agreed, though not without a good deal of hesitation. Reasons for agreeing, however, seemed not entirely lacking. The only previous English version of this re­markable work had long been out of print. Justification too could in some degree be founded on the rather different-angle from which this version is made.

           Over a year was then spent in typing out the MS, during which time, and since, a good deal of revision has taken place, the intention of the revision being always to propitiate the demon of inaccuracy and at the same time to make the translation perspicuous and the translator inconspicuous. Had publication been delayed, it might well have been more polished. Nevertheless the work of polishing is probably endless. Somewhere a halt must be made.

          A guiding principle—the foremost, in fact—has throughout been avoidance of misrepresentation or distortion; for the ideal translation (which has yet to be made) should, like a looking-glass, not dis­colour or blur or warp the original which it reflects Literalness, however, on the one hand and considerations of clarity and style on the other make irreconcilable claims on a translator, who has to choose and to compromise. Vindication of his choice is sometimes difficult.

          I have dealt at the end of the Introduction with some particular problems. Not, however, with all of them or completely; for the space allotted to an introduction is limited.

          Much that is circumstantial has now changed since the Buddha discovered and made known his liberating doctrine 2,500 years ago, and likewise since this work was composed some 9 centuries later. On the other hand, the Truth he discovered has remained untouched by all that circumstantial change. Old cosmologies give place to new; but the questions of consciousness, of pain and death, of responsibility for acts, and of what should be looked to in the scale of values as the highest of all, remain. Reasons for the perennial freshness of the Buddha’s teaching—of his handling of these questions—are several, but not least among them is its inde­pendence of any particular cosmology. Established as it is for its foundation on the self-evident insecurity of the human situation (the Truth of Suffering), the structure of the Four Truths provides.

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