is also shown by a good number of his verses. Generally speaking, the metrical part of the Gâtakamâlâ admits of a fourfold division. There are laudatory verses, praising and pointing out the virtues of the hero; these are commonly found in the first part or preamble of the tale. There are descriptive verses, containing pictures of fine scenery or of phenomena. Further, there are religious discourses, sometimes of considerable length, put in the mouth of the Bodhisattva; they have their place mostly at the end[1]. The rest consists in verses treating of facts in the story, and it is chiefly there that we find again the gâthâs of the corresponding Pâli Gâtakas. It is incontestable that in a great many cases Sûra worked on the same or a very similar stock of gâthâs as are contained in the Sacred Canon of the Southern Buddhists. For the sake of reference I have registered those parallel verses in a Synoptical Table, which is placed at the end of this book (pp. 337-340). Sometimes the affinity is so striking that one text will assist the interpretation and critical restitution of the other. Sûra's stanza, V, 11, for example, has not been invented by the author himself; it is a refined paraphrase in Sanskrit of some Prâkrit gâthâ of exactly the same purport as that which in Fausböll's Gâtaka III, p. 131, bears the number 158. By comparing pâda c in both, it is plain that in the Pâli text no ought to be read instead of vo[2]. It must have been sacred texts in some popular dialect, not in Sanskrit, that underly the elaborate and high-flown verses of Sûra. This is proved, among other things, by the mistake in XIX, 17, pointed out by Prof. Kern in the Various Readings he has appended to his edition.
As I have already remarked, each story is introduced by a leading sentence, expressing some religious maxim, which, according to Indian usage, is repeated again at the end as
- ↑ It is but seldom that the verses contain a mere repetition or development of what has just been told in the prose immediately preceding. Of this kind are XIII, 16; XIX, 5; XXV, 1; XXX, 5.
- ↑ Here are some other instances. In the Bhisagâtaka, Fausb. IV, 309, 11, read puttî … sabbakâmî, cp. Gâtakamâlâ XIX, 13, ibid. l. 22 sabbasamattavedam and l. 24 pûgentu, cp. Gâtakamâlâ XIX, 16; ibid. p. 310, 3 lattha, not alattha, cp. XIX, 18.—In the Kullahamsagâtaka, F. V, 340, 12 khandam the reading of Bds and Sdr is confirmed by Sûra, XXII, 37 ûnam. Ibid. 343, 16 I read tâvad eva ka te lâbho kat' assa yâkanâ ka me, comparing Sûra XXII, 50, and from XXII, 80 I infer that F. V, 350, 16 mama is to be read for dhammam, vasu for vaso, sabbatth' instead of sabb' atth'.—In F. I, 213, 13 a prose passage may be corrected from the parallel prose of Gâtakamâlâ (p. 98, 8 of the edition); divide the words thus, kukkhito gâto andakosam padâletvâ. On the other hand the Pâli text is of use to correct a passage of Sûra. XXII, 33 c we should read dharmo hy apakitah samyag &c., cp. Fausb. V, 339. 22.
