nslated by him from Pali into
Singhalese, and retranslated by Buddhaghosha into Pali, the original
language both of the canonical books and of their commentaries.
Whether historical criticism will allow to the commentaries of
Buddhaghosha the authority due to documents of the fourth century
before Christ, is a question that has yet to be settled. But even as a
collector of earlier traditions and as a writer of the fifth century
after Christ, his authority would be considerable with regard to the
solution of some of the most important problems of Indian history and
chronology. Some scholars who have written on the history of Buddhism
have clearly shown too strong an inclination to treat the statements
contained in the commentaries of Buddhaghosha as purely historical,
forgetting the great interval of time by which he is separated from
the events which he relates. No doubt if it could be proved that
Buddhaghosha's works were literal translations of the so-called
Attakathas or commentaries brought by Mahinda to Ceylon, this would
considerably enhance their historical value. But the whole account of
these translations rests on tradition, and if we consider the
extraordinary precautions taken, according to tradition, by the LXX
translators of the Old Testament, and then observe the discrepancies
between the chronology of the Septuagint and that of the Hebrew text,
we shall be better able to appreciate the risk of trusting to Oriental
translations, even to those that pretend to be literal. The idea of a
faithful literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
minds. Granted that Mahinda translated the original Pali commentaries
into Singhalese, there was nothing to restrain him from inserting
anything that he thought likely to be useful to his new converts.
Granted that Buddhaghosha translated these translations back into
Pali, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then
believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to
generation? Was he not at liberty--nay, would he not have felt it his
duty, to explain apparent difficulties, to remove contradictions, and
to correct palpable mistakes? In our time, when even the
contemporaneous evidence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Jornandes
is sifted by the most uncompromising scepticism, we must not expect a
more merciful treatment for the annals of Buddhism. Scholars engaged
in special researches are too willing to acquiesce in evidence,