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

There are three parts to the poem. The first is the list of gods ; the second the frame-work, put into the Buddha's mouth, at the beginning (after the prologue), and at the end ; the third the prologue, with the verses of the four gods of the Pure Abode. The prologue has been preserved as a separate episode in the Sa;«yutta, I, 27. The way in which the list is fitted into the frame-work in our sections 4, 5, and 6 is very confused and awkward ; and the grammar of the frame-work is inconsistent with the grammar of the list. It is highly probable therefore that the list itself, and also the epilogue, had been handed down as independent works in the community before our Suttanta was composed. The frame-work may be the work of the editor.

Our list here begins in §§ 7, 8, with seven classes or groups of gods, without personal names. The personal names begin at § 9, with the four Great Kings of the four quarters ; and

1 So above, Vol. I, p. 1 7, the worship of Agni is deliberately inserted in a list of animistic hocus-pocus.

INTRODUCTION. 2%X

§§ 10-20 follow with ten other groups in each of which the principal personal names are given. There is another list of gods in the A/ana/iya (No. 32 in the Digha). This other list also begins with the four Great Kings ; and then adds, as a sort of afterthought or appendix, the names of forty-one gods, all mentioned one after another, without division into groups, and without any details. Our §§ 10-20 look very much like an improved and enlarged edition of the bare list in the A/ana/iya. The latter is just such a mnemonic doggrel as was found useful in other cases also by the early Buddhists, who had no books, and were compelled to carry their dictionaries and works of reference in their heads. There are other instances in Pali literature of the original mnemonic verses, and their subsequent expansion, having both been preserved.

As the contents of the two lists, and their great importance for the history of religion in India, have been discussed elsewhere \ it is only necessary here to remind the reader that when these Suttantas were composed the names they contain were full of meaning to the people ; and that the legends here told were intended to counteract the animistic delusions about them then so prevalent in the Ganges valley. They are almost the only evidence we have as yet outside the priestly books. Perhaps the most important fact to which they bear testimony is the continual change in animistic belief that went on in India. They are of especial value, as they show what those beliefs were at a particular period. We shall not be able to have a scientific history of religion in India until the absurd anachronisms of the classical Sanskrit literature have been discarded ; and until we have learnt carefully to distinguish between the divers faiths and gods which, in those books, are mixed up together, and supposed to have remained the same for many centuries on end.

1 Rhys Davids's 'Buddhist India/ pp. 219-237.

[XX. mahA-samaya suttanta.

The Great Concourse.]

i. [253] Thus have I heard. The Blessed One was once dwelling among the Sakiyas, at Kapilavatthu in the Great Wood, together with a great band of the brethren, about five hundred of them, all being Arahants. And gods from the ten thousand worldsystems oft-times assembled there that they might visit the Exalted One and the band of brethren.