698 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



enumerating Buddhaghosa's works, says : The commentary, Sumangala- 

 vilasinI by name, upon the Dlgha-nikaya, Dlgha-nikayassa Suniangala- 

 vilasinl nama atthakatha. The colophon to the Kvu.cm., p. 199, 

 JPTS. 1889 (cp. p. 231, ed. Rangoon), says : Kathavatthu-ppakaranarj 

 . . . tassa nitthita atthavannana. . . . Kathavatthu-ppakarana-attha- 

 katka nitthita. Why should Ave be more Hindu than the Hindus 1 



The fanciful titles should be ignored by us also. — Long ago I 

 heard a jocose account of the method of weighing hogs in Arkansas. 

 They make fast the hog to one end of a rail, balance the rail on a fence 

 with stones fastened to the other end, and then guess how much the 

 stones weigh. Those stones correspond to our fanciful titles. Why 

 tell a student that a citation is from the Par. Jot. ? He has first to 

 find out that Par. Jot. means Paramattha Jotika. Secondly, he must 

 find out what the texts are which have a commentary bearing that 

 name. Thirdly, he must find out which of those texts (in this 

 case Kkuddaka-patka or Sutta-nipata) is intended. Having got so 

 far, he is just as far as he would have been, if, in the first place, we 

 had told him that the citation was, for example, from the commentary 

 on the Sutta-nipata or, briefly, from the Suttanijata-commentary or 

 Sn.cm. 



The abbreviation " cm." for "commentary." — Since then the use 

 of the fanciful titles is a blameworthy indirectness, the commentary on 

 a given text should be spoken of by us uniformly as " the commentary 

 on " that text, or, briefly, "the . . . -commentary." Thus we ought 

 not to speak of " the Sumangala-vilasinI," but rather " the commentary 

 on the Dlgha," or, briefly, " theDlgha-commentary." For this phrase, 

 "the . . . -commentary," it remains to devise a uniform and direct 

 and suggestive and simple abbreviation. 



In the " Contractions " given on p. xvii of Davids and Carpenter's 

 ed. of Sumangala-vilasinI, we find three commentaries designated in 

 three different ways : namely, Dhammapada-commenta.ry as Dhp. Com. ; 

 Jataka-commentary as J. ; and Vinaya-commentary as S.P. Such 

 lack of uniformity, if carried far, would be exceedingly embarrassing. — 

 Lists 1 and 4 and 10 use A., the initial letter of attha-katha, the Pali 

 word for " commentary," and List 13 uses Ak. This again is a useless 

 indirection. — Aufrecht, in his Catalogus catalogorum, uses a turned 

 C (3) for commentary, and two turned C's with a stroke OB) for super- 

 commentary. Personally, I like this ; but as it is too arbitrary for 

 general use, and suggests withal the "scruples" of Apothecaries' 

 Weight, I scruple to use it. — The designation may best be something 

 that suggests, not only the English word "commentary," but also its 

 various equivalents (Fr. commentaire = It. commentario = Sp. co- 



