There is another work in Sanskrit called the Udanavarga, which also has a large number of verses in common with the Dhammapada, but again seems to be a completely independent compilation. It is often most instructive though to compare some of the verses in these different collections. Sometimes they are effectively identical, but at other times they are radically different. It would be a rash man, in our present state of scholarship, who ventured to assert which is the original. Like most anthologies of verses, the Dhammapada is very uneven.
Some verses are both profound and deeply poetic.
Others are awkward, and little more than a list of technical terms. The overall effect of the Dhammapada however is undoubtedly of high moral and spiritual earnestness, and a typically Buddhist gentle persuasiveness. It would be hard to point to a poetic book of a similar length in world religious literature of a correspondingly sustained level.