Texts from the Buddhist canon : commonly known as Dhammapada

23 INTRODUCTION.
such stories " may have been invented to suit the text of the
Dhammapada rather than vice, versd " (p. cvi n.), and this
appears to be very probable ; but yet the stories found in
the work before us must have been well known in India
prior to the middle of the third century A.D., and judging
from the ordinary period occupied in the transmission of
such tales, we may reasonably refer them to a date
perhaps as early as DharmatrS,ta himself. The method
adopted in this work is to give one or two tales, and a
verse or more, as the Moral. The chapters are identical
with the Ta-kheu-king—the only difference being that the
verses or gSthas are fewer^—they are, in fact, only a selec-
tion from the whole to meet the requirements of the story
preceding them. This arrangement is in agreement with
the original design of the work. Buddhaghosha, we are
told, gives for each verse a parable to illiistrate the meaning
of the verse, and believed to have been uttered by
Buddha in his intercourse with his disciples, or in preach-
ing to the multitudes that came to hear him.l And so
here we have a tale for each verse, delivered by Buddha
for the benefit of his disciples, or others. As to the
character of these stories, some of them are puerile and
uninteresting. But if I mistake not, they are of a
description not opposed to the character of the age to
which they are assigned by the Chinese.
The method of teaching by parables, it is plain, was
customary in India during the first and second centuries
B.C. The JStakas, and the stories which occupy such a
great part of the ordinary lives of Buddha (vid. Eomantic
Legend, passim), are illustrations of this. We know also
from sculptures that these stories were familiar in India,
and were, in fact, the ordinary means for instructing the
people, at a date somewhere about the second century B.C.,
if not earlier,^ so that I see no reason why the parables
in this work, which was brought to China, in the first
' Max MiiUer, Dh. ix. dated by General Cunningham from
!* The Sculptures at Bharahut are the time of Asoka, some 350 B.c.