LANMAN. — PALI BOOK-TITLES. 683 



constituent texts of which do not by any means form one larger co- 

 herent text. That collection is an omnium-gatherum. As a whole, it 

 differs greatly from each of the units that make up the four Nikayas ; 

 and so does each of its 15 constituent parts. These parts, moreover, 

 differ so, each from the others, that the title of each requires to be 

 taken account of separately. 



Canon 5. — The abbreviations should conform to some easily remem- 

 bered general scheme of a set of classes. Unquestionably, for Pali 

 texts, the best scheme is one that shows at a glance the class to which 

 a given text belongs by the number of letters employed in abbreviat- 

 ing its title : that is, a scheme of unilateral, biliteral, triliteral, and 

 quadriliteral abbreviations, — the abbreviations for each text of a given 

 class consisting uniformly of one letter, of two, of three, or of four. 



This canon is designed to increase the ready suggestiveness of the 

 abbreviations, and so is close akin with Canon 2. The traditional 

 classification 24 of the Pali texts is such that they lend themselves 

 with great ease to this scheme. 



Davids's guiding principles are reprinted above, at p. 6G8, and his pro- 

 posals appear in my Table II (p. 676), as List 4. For Vinaya he gives 

 on p. 104, as alternative designations, "V. or Vin." Of the other 

 26 abbreviations of the names of Pitaka texts, just 10 are unilit- 

 eral. 25 Of the remaining 16, 8 are biliteral, 6 are triliteral, and 2 are 

 quadriliteral ; or, if we count (as we most certainly should not : 

 Canon 6) the digraphs kh, th, dh, bh, each as one letter, then 13 are 

 biliteral and three are triliteral. — The underlying idea of the pro- 

 posals of Davids is most valuable, and to his proposals I am indebted 

 for the suggestion of my own. On the other hand, the actual working 

 out of his own ideas is very unpractical and fragmentary. I am 

 absolutely certain that his list of 1896 (List 4) would prove highly 

 unsatisfactory for lexicon use. 



Reverting to Canon 5. As that eminent and sagacious mariner, 

 Cap'en Bunsby, justly observes, 26 "The bearings of this observation 

 lays in the application on it." To the application of my observations, 

 accordingly, let me address myself. 



Uniliterals for the first four Nikayas. — These first. If we followed 

 the usual order of the books, we should designate Vinaya texts with 

 uniliterals, Suttanta texts with biliterals, Abhidhamma texts with tri- 

 literals, and uncanonical texts with quadriliterals. We have seen, 



24 See Minayeff, Recherches sur le Bouddhisme, pp. 257-259. 



25 The principle of 1896 was to designate the Pitaka texts, "as far as possi- 

 ble," with one letter, and later texts with three. 



26 Dickens, Dombey and Son, 1, chap, xxiii. Cp. 2, chap. xxx. 



