Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
The subject is twofold, both necessary points at the time, and both scarcely intelligible, without a little attention, to modern Western minds. Even in the East, and to Buddhists, the story now seems somewhat strange and antiquated. The success of the method of argument here adopted has been so far complete that the need of the argument has ceased, the point of view has changed, and the Suttanta, among the most popular in early times, is now, compared to others dealing with the positive side of the doctrine, considered of minor value.
The two points are those of the brahmins and the gods. The method of the argument is not to argue about anything ; to accept the opponents' position throughout, and simply to out-flank it by making the gods and the brahmins themselves act and speak as quite good Buddhists, and take for granted the Buddhist position on ethical matters. This is of course, from one point of view, logically absurd. No militant brahmin, in favour of the pecuniary or social advantages allowed to brahmins by birth, would speak or act thus. No god, as he was supposed by his worshippers to be (and he existed only as such), would speak or act thus. But the composer (or composers) of the Govinda knew this quite well. And he is (or they are) scrupulously polite. The actions imputed to the brahmin and the gods, the words put into their mouths, are quite admirable. No one can blame the story-teller that they happen also to be Buddhist. The question as to what the good brahmin ought to be, what a good god ought to do or say, is quietly begged in the most delicate way. On this point — the ethical doctrine — the narrator is thoroughly in earnest ; and he no less thoroughly enjoys the irony of the incongruities involved. It is the fashion to label all Buddhist writings, without discrimination, as insufferably dull ; and the fashion will be kept up, no doubt, among those who do not see the point of the really very able way in which, sometimes, it is all done. But we may be permitted to appreciate a clever story (even with a moral) in spite of the fact that the story part is a story — all make-believe, none of it historically true.