GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BUDDHIST SUTTAS. ON being asked to contribute a volume of translations from the Pâli Suttas to the important series of which this work forms a part, the contributor has to face the difficulty of choosing from the stores of a nearly unknown literaturea difficulty arising from the embarrassment, not of poverty, but of wealth. I have endeavoured to make such a choice as would enable me to bring together into one volume a collection of texts which should be as complete a sample as one volume could afford of what the Buddhist scriptures, on the whole, contain. With this object in view I have refrained from confining myself to the most interesting books -those, namely, which deal with the Noble Eightfold Path, the most essential, the most original, and the most attractive part of Gotama's teaching; and I have chosen accordingly, besides the Sutta of the Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness (the Dhamma-kakka-ppavattanaSutta), which treats of the Noble Path, six others which treat of other sides of the Buddhist system; less interesting perhaps in their subject matter, but of no less historical value. These are 1. The Book of the Great Decease (the Mahâparinibbâna-Suttanta), which is the Buddhist representative of what, among the Christians, is called a Gospel. 2. The Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness (the Dhamma-kakka-ppavattana-Sutta), containing the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path which ends in Arahatship. 3. The Discussion on Knowledge of the Three Vedas (the Tevigga-Suttanta), which is a controversial dialogue on the right method of attaining to a state of union with Brahmâ. 4. The Sutta entitled 'If he should desire—' (Âkańkheyya-Sutta), which shows in the course of a very beautiful argument some curious sides of early Buddhist mysticism and of curiously unjustified belief. 5. The Treatise on Barrenness and Bondage (the Ketokhila-Sutta), which treats of the Buddhist Order of Mendicants, from the moral, as distinguished from the disciplinary, point of view. 6. The Legend of the Great King of Glory (the Mahâ-sudassana-Suttanta), which is an example of the way in which previously existing legends were dealt with by the early Buddhists. 7. The Sutta entitled 'All the Âsavas' (the Sabbâsava-Sutta), which explains the signification of a constantly recurring technical term, and lays down the essential principles of Buddhist Agnosticism. The Discipline of the Buddhist Mendicants, the Rules of their Order-probably the most influential, as it is the oldest, in the world-will be fully described, down to its minutest details, in the translation of the Vinaya Pitaka, which will appropriately form a subsequent part of this Series of Translations of the Sacred Books of the East. There was therefore no need to include any Sutta on this subject in the present volume: but of the rest of the matters discussed in the Buddhist Sacred Books of Buddhist le - gend, gospel, controversial theology, and ethics-the works selected will I trust give a correct and adequate, if necessarily a somewhat fragmentary, idea. The age of these writings can be fixed, without much uncertainty, at about the latter end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century before the commencement of the Christian era. This is the only hypothesis which seems, at present, to account for the facts known about them. It should not however be looked upon as anything |