LANMAN. — PALI BOOK-TITLES. 679 



The maker of a list must look a good bit into the future and scrupu- 

 lously avoid methods that are sure to waste the time and patience of 

 his colleagues for years to come. Each of these wastes is small, a 

 fraction of a minute or more, but the wastes are innumerable, and in 

 the aggregate large, and wholly needless. 



Canon 2 — The abbreviations of text-titles should be so readily sug- 

 gestive as to be easily understood, — if possible, without any explana- 

 tion, or, at most, with a very little explanation once given. 



The phrase " without explanation " means, of course, without explana- 

 tion to those who know the names of the texts. This canon I deem the 

 most important of all, next after Canon 1. Strictly, Canons 3 and 4 

 and 5 are ancillary to Canon 2 ; but there is so much to say in illus- 

 tration and enforcement of Canons 3 and 4 and 5 that they may best 

 be set up by themselves. 



To illustrate Canon 2, take the parts of the Vinaya-pitaka, namely : 

 Sutta-vibhanga, "Rule-Division," Maha-vagga, "Big (Group or)-Divi- 

 sion," Culla-vagga, "Little (Group or)-Division," Parivara, " Entourage, 

 Following, Appendix." The designations of these parts in List 5 were 

 SV., MV., CV., and PV. It is true that V is the initial of the second 

 part of each of these titles, if we reckon, as we certainly should not, 

 -vara (as it were, -dix of Appen-dix) as such a part. The uniform 

 second letter would serve to characterize all these four abbreviations 

 as belonging to one group, and so tend (according to Canon 5) to make 

 them acceptable ones, were it not for the fact that V stands for so 

 many extremely common parts of Pali text-titles or text-divisions 

 (vibhanga, vagga, vatthu, varjsa, Visuddhi-magga) as to be readily 

 suggestive of nothing at all in particular. Consider too the unsugges- 

 tive vagueness of the meanings of the designations themselves ! how 

 palpable it is, if we turn them into English, and use RD., BD., LD., 

 and AD. respectively for Rule-Division, Big-Division, Little-Division, 

 and Appen-dix ! Moreover these four groupings do not wholly coin- 

 cide with the five volumes of Oldenberg's edition and of the Burmese, 

 nor with the eight of the Siamese. 19 Nor do they take account of the 



19 It is a thousand pities (as we look back !) that Oldenberg inverted the 

 native sequence (3, 4, 1, 2, 5) of the volumes in his admirable and timely 

 edition. — The division of the Vinaya-text into volumes coincides as between 

 Oldenberg's ed. and the Hanthawaddy ed. In the Siamese ed., the Maha- 

 vagga (Oldenberg's l) forms vol's 4 and 5, and the Culla-vagga (O's 2) forms 

 6 and 7, and the Parivara (O's 5) forms 8. It is otherwise with the Bhikkhu- 

 and Bhikkhunl-vibhaiigas : of the latter, the Siamese ed. makes a whole volume 

 (3d) ; and of the former, it puts kandas 1-3 into volume 1, and 4-7 into volume 

 2; while Oldenberg's puts kandas 1-4 into volume 3, and kandas 5-7 with all 

 of the Bhikkhunl-vibhanga into vol. 4. In like manner the Hanthawaddy ed. 



