Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)

1 This difference in the mental endowments of the two gods, — the one the mere king of the gods, an Indian Zeus ; and the other the Great First Cause, the outcome of the hightest speculation — is always carefully observed in the various speeches ascribed, in the early Buddhist texts, to these divinities. See above, p. 175, for another instance.

2 The doctrinal material stands on a different footing. Already in
1877 I ventured to point out the difference (in ' Buddhism,' pp. 86-7),
and the point has since increasingly forced itself upon my notice.

The whole story is retold, in a Sanskrit dialect and in different phraseology and order, in the Mahavastu. The following table will make the degree of the resemblance and difference plain.

Maha-govinda Suttanta. Govindiya Sutta in Mahavastu.

§ 1 Vol. Ill, p. 197

2 198

4 J99

5, 6 200

8 201

9 200

10 201

12 201

13 198
17 203
19-27 202

29 204

30 205
31, 32 206
34 2°7
35, 36 208
37. 38 209
43,44 210,11

45 2I2

46 213,14

47 215

48 217

50 216

51 219
56 220

57, 58 222

60 223

61 215

Now we do not know exactly when and where Buddhists began to write in Sanskrit, though it was probably in Kashmir some time before the beginning of our era. They did not then translate into Sanskrit any Pali book. They wrote new books. And the reason for this was twofold. In the first place they had already come to believe things very different from those contained in the canon ; they were( no longer in full sympathy with it. In the second place, though Pali was never the vernacular of Kashmir, it was widely known there, and even very probably still used for literary work ; translations were therefore not required.

This gives a possible explanation of the most astounding

Professor Windisch (in 'Die Composition des Mahavastu,' Leipzig,
1909, p. 494) supports this view.

fact we know about the Mahavastu. It purports to be the Vinaya (that is, the Rules regulating the outward conduct of the members of the Order), as held by the school of the Lokottara-vadins. In M. Senart's admirable edition it fills three bulky volumes. There is not, from beginning to end of them, even one single Rule of the Order! No explanation has been given of this extraordinary state of things, though it was pointed out at once on the publication of the edition K Prof. Windisch in his able discussion (just above referred to) of the actual contents of the book does not refer to this remarkable omission.

The old Vinaya begins with the Sutta Vibhanga, that is, the Rules themselves elucidated by discussion of their origin and meaning. This occupies 615 pages in Oldenberg's editions. Then follow in 660 pages the Khandhakas, twenty-two in number, dealing with various points of Canon Law. At the beginning of these is an Introduction, explaining how the Order arose ; and at the end an Appendix, on the Councils 2. This old Vinaya has never been translated into Sanskrit. The Mahavastu is based on the Introduction to the Khandhakas, rewritten, added to, enormously expanded, and arranged according to the order of the Pali Nidana Katha. Now why did the Lokottara-vadins, in their Vinaya, omit practically the whole of the Vinaya, and confine themselves to rewriting the Introduction to what is only a part of the Vinaya ? Why did not they also rewrite the rest? May it be because, when they wrote, the old rules and explanations, with which they did not quarrel in the least, were still well known and used in the original Pali, or in some closely cognate shape? 3

It must have been from some such cognate recension, and not from our Pali text, that the Govinda story was Sanskritised. The differences between the Digha and the Mahavastu are too great to have arisen at one stage. The whole point of the story in the Digha is the way in which Brahma describes his

1 Rhys Davids, J. R. A. S., 1898, 424.