Parallels To The Dhammapada Verses – Ānandajoti Bhikkhu (eng)

Parallels to the Dhammapada Verses

in the Pāḷi Canon and in other MIA Languages

Ānandajoti Bhikkhu

In 2004 I published A Comparative Edition of the Dhammapada, there presenting an edition of the text, along with all the parallels I could find in Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) languages, together with
some studies of the text, and detailed indexes. One thing I didn’t study at that time was the internal Pāḷi Canonical parallels, but recently being at work on the text again, this time working towards making a translation of the Patna Dhammapada, I have also studied the parallels within the Canon, and this has blossomed into the present work.

The text I have used is my own edition of the Dhammapada, which was published in 2007;4 and for the MIA parallels I have relied on the revised edition of the Comparative Edition as published on my website. This is an outline of the criterion I had in mind when making this compilation. I accepted a verse as a parallel only if two lines or more match the Pāḷi. This proved necessary because a quarter-verse line like Sabbesu bhūtesu nidhāya daṇḍaṁ (Dhp 142c), for instance, occurs around a
dozen times in the Canon, but none of them in a true parallel to verse 142. Many other similar instances could be cited. Where I have found only a partial match consisting of two lines (a half-verse), I marked it as (partial:) and (partial quotation:).

DOWNLOAD EBOOK: Parallels to the Dhammapada Verses