The Mt. Sterling advocate. (Mt. Sterling, Ky.) 1890-current, 1896-01-28
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Some Sacred writings That Are Perfectly
Appalling In Their BULK.


Some Sacred writings That Are Perfectly
Appalling In Their Bulk.
The sacred books Of the Bud
dnists are perfectly appalling in their
bulk. They are called the Tripitaka,
the Three Baskets, and were origi-
nally written in Pail, a vernacular
form of Sanskrit. They have been
translated into many languages,
such as Chinese, Tibetan and Mant-
choo, They have also been written
and published in various alphabets,
not only in Devanagari, but in Gin
galese, Burmese and Siamese letters.
The copy in 10 volumes lately pre-
sented to the University of Oxford
by the king of Siam contains the
Pail text written in Siamese letters,
but the language is always the same.
1t is the Pail, or the vulgar tongue,
as it was supposed to have been
spoken by Buddha himself about 500
b. @. After having been preserved
for centuries by oral tradition it
was reduced for the first time to
writing under King Vattagamani in
1915 B. c., the time when the truly
literary period of India may be said
to begin. But besides this Pail canon
there is another III Sanskrit, and
there are books in the Sanskrit
canon which are not to be found in
the Pail canon, and vice versa.
According to a tradition current
among the southern as well as the
northern Buddhists, the original
canon consisted of 81, 900 books, 3d.
900 being ascribed to Buddha him
self and 2.000 to his disciples. Book.
however, seems to have meant here
no more than treatise or topic.
But as a matter of fact the Pail
canon consists, according to the
Rev. R. Spence Hardy, of 275, $50
stanzas and its commentary of $751;
$50 stanzas, each stanza reckoned at
80 syllables. This would give us
S,S0S, 900 syllables for the text and
1859, 600 syllables for the COM
mentary. This is of course an enor-
m Gus amount The question is only
whether the Rev. Spence Hardy and
his assistants, who are responsible
for these statements, counted right
ly. Professor Rhys Davis, by tax
ing the average of words in ten
leaves, arrives at much smaller
sums-namely, at 1852, 500 words
for the Pail canon, which in an Eng
lish translation, as he says, would
amount to about twice that number,
or 8, sos, 600 words. Even this would
be ample for Bible 1t would make
the Buddhist Bible nearly five times
as large as our own, but it seems to
me that Spence Hardy's account is
more likely to be correct. Professor
Rhys Davis, by adopting the same
plan of reckoning, brings the num-
Der of words in the Bible to about
100000. We found it given as 49,
500. But who shall decidep
What the bulk of suah a work
would be we may gather from what
we know of the bulk of the transla-
tions. There is complete copy of
the Chinese translation at the India
Office in London; also in the Bod
leian, and catalogue of it made by
Japanese pupil of mine, the Rev.
Bunylu Nanjio, brings the number
of separate works in it to 1862
The Tibetan translation, which dates
from the eighth century, consists of
two collections, commonly called the
Kanjur and Tanjur,
The Kanjur consists of 100 VOL
umes in folio, the Tanjur of 225
volumes, each volume weighing be-
tween four and five pounds. This
collection, published by command
of the emperor of China, sells for
$500. A copy of it is found at the
India Office. The Buriates, Mongo-
liam tribe converted to Buddhism,
bartered 1000 oxen for one copy of
the Kanjur, and the same tribe paid
10000 silver rubles for complete
copy of both Kanjur and Tanjur.
What must it be to believe in 325
volumes, each weighing five pounds
nay, even to read through such a
bible Professor Max Muller in
Nineteenth Century.