INTRODUCTION

§ 1. Literary questions concerning Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa.

THE LITERARY QUESTIONS connected with the Mahāvaṃsa and the development of the historical tradition in Ceylon have been thoroughly discussed in my book Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa. 1 I believe that I have there demonstrated that the two Ceylonese Chronicles are based upon older materials and for this reason should claim our attention as sources of history.

Now, however, R. O. Franke has taken a decided stand against my inferences. 2 He disputes the existence of an older historical work as foundation of Dīp. and Mah.

The former appears to him to be only a botched compilation of Pāli quotations from the Jātakas birth stories of the Buddha and other canonical works. But the author of the Mah. has merely copied the Dīp. and the same applies to Buddhaghosa and his historical introduction to the Samanta-Pāsādikā. I have however, I hope, succeeded in combating the doubts and objections raised by Franke. 3

The defects of the Dīp., which naturally neither can nor should be disputed, concern the outer form, not the contents.

1 Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa and the Historical Tradition in Ceylon, Leipzig, 1905. Translated into English by E. M. Coomaraswamy, Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa, Colombo, 1908. Quotations in the following pages follow the English edition. I may also refer here expressly to Oldenberg's remarks, Dīpavaṃsa, ed. Introd., p. 1 foll. (1879), as the starting-point for my own.

2 Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa in the Vienna Journal for the Knowledge of the Orient 21, pp. 203 foll.; 317 foll.

3 Once More Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa; Journal of the German Oriental Society 63, p. 540 foll. I note that Oldenberg in the Archive for the Science of Religion 13, p. 614, agrees with my inferences against Franke.