Patna Dhammapada, Patna Dhamma Verses

Preface - 5
As the photographs of this text are kept at the K P Jayaswal Research Institute in Patna in
India, the identification of the text as the Patna Dhammapada (with abbreviation, PDhp)
is now normally used. 7
Editions and Studies
The first printed edition of the text was made by N. S. Shukla, which was printed at Patna
in 1979, under the title The Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dharmapada, and was based on his
MLitt. Thesis.
The following year Gustav Roth published a new edition called The Patna Dharmapada,
which was included as a section of the Language of the Earliest Buddhist Tradition, which
was edited by Heinz Bechert in Göttingen (1980). Accompanying his text is his Notes on
the Patna Dharmapada, which discussed the text and described features of the language. 8
In 1986, Margaret Cone presented her thesis at Cambridge, which contained another
transcription of the text. The unpublished thesis was entitled THE PATNA
DHAMMAPADA, transcribed and translated with a commentary. In it she translated the
text, recorded the variant readings found in Shukla and Roth, and gave a philological
commentary, and discussed the parallels.
In 1989 Dr. Cone published an edition of the text based on her thesis, entitled Patna
Dhammapada 1, 9 with the alternative readings by Shukla and Roth, but without her
translation and commentary. 10
Kōgen Mizuno prepared another edition of the text in 1990, published under the title A
Study of the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dharmapada II. 11 However, this has no independent
value, as Mizuno had not seen the photographs and it is simply based on Shukla and Roth.
Mizuno also discussed the text in Dharmapadas of Various Buddhist Schools; 12 and A
Comparative Study of Dharmapadas. 13
Roth once more made a study of the text which was presented as the 2 nd Rahul
Sankrityayana Memorial Lecture in Patna in 1998, later published by the Patna Museum
in 2000, under the title Discussions About The Patna Dharmapada.
7
Both Shukla and Roth refer to it as a Dharmapada. The text uses the form Dharmma- in the
colophon (but nowhere Dharma-), but this was evidently added later, as were the -varggaḥ endtitles.
The form of the word used in the text itself is Dhamma-, and this seems preferable for the
title. Kogen Mizuno used the abbreviation SDhp.
8
Both the Notes and the Text form a Supplement to his main paper which was on The Language of
the Āyra-Mahāsāṁghika-Lokuttaravādins, pp 78-93; Notes, pp 93-97; Text, pp 97-135.
9
There was no II. JPTS XIII, pp 101-218.
10
All three editions show a great variation in the readings adopted, but the most thoroughly
researched seems to be Cone’s text, which I rely upon for this translation.
11
Buddhist Studies (Bukkyō Kenkyū, XIX, 1990).
12
pp 255-267 of Studies in Pali and Buddhism, A Memorial Volume in Honor of Bhikkhu Jagdish
Kashyap, Delhi, 1979.
13
pp 168-175 of Buddhist Studies in Honour of Hammalava Saddhātissa, Nugegoda, 1984.