Professor Max Muller, in 1881, translated the Dhammapada, a collection of verses ; the Sutta Nipata, a collection of discourses, was translated by V. Frausboll ; and Rhys Davids issued the Buddhist Sutras.
Buddhist writings have been preserved iu two comparatively original redactions, but neither of them in the Magadhi dialects, the primitive lan guage of their creed. The Buddhists of Nepal, Tibet, and China have their books in Sanskrit, or have translations immediately from the Sanskrit. The Sanskrit writings were made known about 1840, by Mr. B. H. Hodgson.
The literature of the Buddhists of Ceylon, Burma, and Siam, is in Pali ; and the Dipavansa contains a history of Buddhism in that island, which breaks off with the death of Mahasena, A.D. 302. The Mahawansa was compiled by Mahawana, who lived about A.D. 500 ; it has been brought down to the 18th century by successive writers, and was translated by the Honourable G. Tumour of the Ceylon Civil Service.
Their relative age and authority is not yet decided, though that of the Pali has been known since the 5th century by the commentaries of Buddha ghosha.
Analyses of this literature have been made in Spence Hardy's Eastern Monachism ; Childer's Pali Dictionary ; Rhys David's Buddhism ; B. H. Hodgson's Memoirs in Asiatic Researches and the reprint of his Collected Essays, Csoma of Koros in Bengal As. Soc. Journal and Asiatic Researches.
The Chinese collection has been described in Beal's Buddhist Tripitaka as it is known in China and Japan, and W. Wassiljew's Der Buddhismus.
Up to the present time, all that has been found of the Abhidharma is in extracts and fragments.
Some of the Sutras have been translated by E. Burnouf, Max Muller, and Cecil Bendall, and in the Journal of the R. As. Society. The Vinaya Pitakam in the Pali has been published by II. Oldenberg, the Mahavagga in 1879, and the Cullavaga in 1881.—Barth, Rel. of India.
Mahendra, son of Asoka, is supposed to have brought the Attha-katta, ancient commentaries in Pali, to Ceylon, and to have translated them into Singhalese, which Buddha ghosa, about A.D. 430, re-translated into Pali. According to another account, the doctrines were first reduced to writing by the Ceylon priests during the reign of king Vartagamani, 88-76 B.C., and by a synod assembled 10-40 A.D., by the Turnshka king Kanislika. For the former the language used was the vernacular, from which in the 5th century it was translated into Pali ; for the latter, Sanskrit.
The Buddhist religious works of Tibet brought to notice by Alexander Csoma de Koros, are the Tanjur, which consists in its different editions of 100,102, and 108 folio volumes, and comprises 1083 distinct works. The Tanjur consists of 225 volumes folio, each weighing from 4 to 5 lbs., in the edition of Pekin ; but editions have also been published at Lhassa, and other places. Of these, De Koros gave an analysis in the 20th volume of the Asiatic Researches, and died soon after.
In the Tibetan creed, the doctrine of trans migration is shown, and final absorption into Buddha, as the reward of a virtuous life. It therefore follows that Buddha, with the Tibetans, is the divine Being who created all, and to whom all return, and that for the good there is no sepa rate existence in a future world. There has been some misapprehension regarding the Buddhas and Budhisatwas of the Tibetans, the regeneration of the Grand Lama being considered as an exceptional case of a Buddha returning amongst mankind. Mr. Hodgson (pp. 137, 138) truly calls the ' divine Lamas' of Tibet, Arhantas ;. but he be lieves that a very gross superstition has wrested the just notion of the character to its own use,' and so created the immortal mortals, or present palpable divinities of Tibet.' In the Nouv. Jour. Asiat. t. xiv. p. 408, ii., Fra Orazio says that Lama sempre sara coil' istessa anima del mede sime Ciang-c'iub, oppure in altri carpi.' Remusat was not aware of this fact when he stated, ' Les Lamas du Tibet se considerent euxmemes comme autant de divinit6s (Bouddhas) incarnees pour le saint des hommes.' But the explanation which Major Cunningham received in Ladakh, which is the same as that obtained by Fra Orazio in Lassa, is simple and convincing. The Grand Lama is only a regenerated Budhisatwa, who refrains front accepting Buddhahood, that he may continue to be born again and again for the benefit of man kind. For a Buddha cannot possibly bo regener ated, 1111/1 hence the famous epithets of Sathagatha, thus gone,' and Sugata, well gone,' or ' gone for ever.' The valley of Le or Ladakh proper, Zanskar, Ileinbaks or Dras, Sum. I'urik, Spiti, Nubrn, Janskee, and Bong, are all Buddhist (The Bilsa Topes, by Major Cunningham, pp. 1-67).