amination.[764]

Often, however, the translator, whatever his weaknesses may have been,
had before him a text differing in bulk and arrangement from the Pali
and Sanskrit texts which we possess. Thus, there are four Chinese
translations of works bearing some relation to the Dhammapada of the
Pali Canon. All of these describe the original text as the compilation
of Dharmatrata, to whom is also ascribed the compilation of the
Tibetan Udanavarga.[765] His name is not mentioned in connection with
the Pali text, yet two of the Chinese translations are closely related
to that text. The Fa-chu-ching[766] is a collection of verses
translated in 224 A.D. and said to correspond with the Pali except
that it has nine additional chapters and some additional stanzas. The
Fa-chu-p'i-yu-ching[767] represents another edition of the same
verses, illustrated by a collection of parables. It was translated
between 290 and 306. The Ch'u-yao-ching,[768] translated in 399, is a
similar collection of verses and parables, but founded on another
Indian work of much greater length. A revised translation containing
only the verses was made between 980 and 1001.[769] They are said to
be the same as the Tibetan Udana, and the characteristics of this
book, going back apparently to a Sanskrit original, are that it is
divided into thirty-three chapters, and that though it contains about
300 verses found in Pali, yet it is not merely the Pali text plus
additions, but an anthology arranged on a different principle and only
partly identical in substance.[770]

There can be little doubt that the Pali Dhammapada is one among
several collections of verses, with or without an explanatory
commentary of stories. In all these collections there was much common
matter, both prose and verse, but some were longer, some shorter, some
were in Pali and some in Sanskrit. Whereas the Chinese Dhammapada is
longer than the Indian texts, the Chinese version of Milinda's
Questions[771] is much shorter and omits books iv-vii. It was made
between 317 and 420 A.D. and the inference is that the original Indian
text received later additions.

A more important problem is this: what is the relation to the Pali Canon
of the Chinese texts bearing titles corresponding to Dirgha, Madhyama,
Samyukta and Ekottara? These collections of sutras do not call themselves
Nikaya but A-han or Agama: the titles are translated as Ch'ang (long),
Chung (medium), Tsa (miscellaneous) and Tseng-i, rep