මහාවංශය (Great Chronicle of Ceylon)

Introduction

by greater skill in the employment of the Pāli language, by more artistic composition and by a more liberal use of the material contained in the original work. While the authorship of the Dīp. is not known the author of the Mahāvaṃsa is known as Mahānāma. 1

5. It is also on the Dīp. that BUDDHAGHOSA bases his historical introduction to the Samantapāsādikā The All-Pleasing; 2 but he completes and adds to its information with statements which could only have been drawn directly from the Aṭṭhakathā.

6. The MAHĀVAṂSA-ṬĪKĀ brings to the contents of the Dīp. and Mah. further additions, taken from the original work. It was certainly not composed till between 1000 and 1250 A. D. But there can be no doubt that the Aṭṭhakathā-Mahāvaṃsa lay before the author, as he also supposes it to be known to his readers and accessible to all. 3 For this reason his statements as to the original work, its form and its contents, naturally acquire particular importance.

These conclusions are not in any way altered if I am now inclined to consider the relation between Mah. and Dīp. as a closer one than in my first work. That the author of the former knew the latter and used it I have naturally never disputed. But I should now wish, in agreement with FLEET, to go much further and regard the Mah. as a conscious and intentional rearrangement of the Dīp., as a sort of commentary to this latter. I also think now that the quotation of the ‘Mahāvaṃsa of the ancients’ in the proœmium introduction of our Mah. refers precisely to the Dīp. I have besides already indicated the possibility of this view in my Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa, p. 17. FLEET 4 then translates the well-known passage of the later Cūlavaṃsa Lesser Chronicle (38. 59) datvā sahassaṃ dīpetuṃ Dīpavaṃsaṃ samādisi original: "having given a thousand, he ordered the Dīpavaṃsa to be illuminated/explained" in very illuminating fashion: ‘he (king Dhātusena) bestowed a thousand (pieces of gold) and gave orders to write a dīpikā explanation/commentary on the Dīpavaṃsa.’

1 See RHYS DAVIDS, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1905, p. 391.
2 Edited by H. OLDENBERG, The Vinaya Piṭakaṃ, iii, p. 283 foll.
3 I have indicated in Journal of the German Oriental Society 63, p. 549 foll., passages in the Mahāvaṃsa Ṭīkā which undoubtedly bear this out.
4 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1909, p. 5, n. 1.