SACRED WRITING BUDDHISM:
THE DHAMMAPADA
Translated By John Ross Carter
And Mahinda Palihawadana
BOOK-OF- THE- MONTH CLUB
NEW YORK
INTRODUCTION
Title: The Dhammapada is undoubtedly the least familiar of all the titles of Sacred Book in the set. It is also perhaps the most obscure in its original meaning, as both Buddhist scholar and Western Bud-dhologists have acknowledged. The two part of the compound word are ‘dhamma’ and ‘pada’. As Friedrich Max Muller explained in the introduction to his translation of the work in Sacred Books of the East, first published in 1881: “’Dhamma’ has many meanings. Under one aspect it means religion, particularly the religion taught by Buddha, the law which every Buddhist should accept and observe. Under another aspect ‘dhamma’ is virtue, or the realization of the law”.
The words “Pada” is interpreted more explicitly in the text of the Dhammapada itself: “The path to the Deathless is awareness; unawareness, the path of death”. As the commentary explains, “the path: padam” refers to the means, the way.” Max Muller suggested the translation “Footstep of religion”, but added that “it cannot be denied that the title of Dhammapada was very soon understood in a different sense also, namely, as “Sentences of ‘Religion’.” The translator of our version here, John Ross Carter and Mahinda palihawadana, propose: “The title Dhammapada means ‘sayings of dhamma’ – that is, religiously inspiring statements thought to have been made by the Buddha on various occasions”. They go on to explain: “The word ‘dhamma’ mean the literary corpus of canonical teaching… The word ‘pada’ means support”. Some such title as “ The sayings of the Master” would, without doing unforgivable violence to the original, cover the sayings of the Book of Deuteronomy, the saying or Jesus in the Four Gospels, the saying of Muhammad in the Qur`an, the saying of Confucius in the analects, and the sayings of Gotama Buddha here in the Dhammapada.
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Text II
The text with Transliteration and Commentary
Prologue
The Pairs
Awareness
The Mind
Flowers
The Childish
The Sagacious
The Worthy
The Thousand
The Wrong
The Rod
Old age
The Self
The World
The Awakened One
Happiness
The Pleasant
Wrath
Stains
The Firm in Dhamma
The Path
Miscellaneous
Hell
The Elephant
Craving
The Bhikkhu
The brahmana