theros and the most accomplished discriminators (of the true doctrines).” All, therefore, of these genealogies, excluded from his Aṭṭhakathá, which are now found only in the Tíka of the Maháwanso, or in the Dipawanso, as well as much more perhaps, illustrative of the ancient history of India, which the compliers of these two Ceylonese historical works did not consider worth preserving, Buddhaghóso must have rejected from his commentaries, to which he gave almost exclusively the character of a religious work.
My Buddhist coadjutors are consequently now reluctantly brought to admit, that the Maháwanso, with its Tíka, and Dipawanso are the only Páli records extant in Ceylon, which profess to contain the Indian genealogies from the creation to the advent of Sákya; and that even those records do not furnish the genealogies in a continuous form. And, now that my mind is divested of the bias which had been created by their previous representations, and which led me to attach great importance to the historical portions of Buddhaghóso’s Aṭṭhakathá I cannot but take blame to myself for having even for a time allowed that impression to be made on me. The author of the Maháwanso[1], in his Tíka, declares more than once that he compiles his work from the Sihala Maháwanso and Aṭṭhakaṭhá of the Maháwiháro, and from the Sihala Aṭṭhakaṭhá of the Uttawiháro fraternities, as well as from the Maháwanso of the Uttawiháro priests. The last mentioned of these works alone, as far as I am able to form an opinion at present, was composed in the Páli language, at the time Mahánámo compiled his Maháwanso. I am induced to entertain this opinion from the circumstance, that Mahánámo’s quotations from that work alone are in the metrical form, whereas all the translated quotations made by Páli authors from Sihala authorities are invariably, as might have been expected, rendered in prose. One of these quotations consists of the identical two verses with which the Dipawanso opens, and at the close of the Tíka a reference is made to the Dipawanso for explanation of the violation of the Maháwiháro consecration, in the reign of Mahaseno. For these reasons, and as that work bears also the title of the “Maháwanso” or “the great genealogy,” my Buddhist coadjutors concur with me in thinking, that the Dipawanso now extant is the Páli Maháwanso of the Uttawiháro fraternity. In fact the titles of Dipa and Mahá, are indiscriminately given to both these histories. To prevent, however, their being confounded with each other, I shall continue to reserve the title of Mahá for Mahánámo’s work, and that
- ↑ Pages xxx. xxxii. xlil. xliii. of the Introduction to the Maháwanso.
