JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY 



Part I.— HISTORY, LITERATURE, &e. 

 No. II.— 1876. 



Pali Studies. N~o. 1. — By Major Gr. E, Feyer, Deputy Commissioner, 



British Burma. 



I. — On the Ceylon Geammaeian Sanghaeakkhita Theea and his 

 Teeatise on Ehetoeic. 



It was the practice amongst members of the early Buddhist church 

 when entering the priesthood to discard their patronymic, and to adopt a 

 priestly title, under which it was not always easy to recognize their identity. 

 Thus it was with the subject of the present sketch, of whom nothing was 

 known, except that he was the author of Vuttodaya. Another of his works, 

 however, (Sambandhacintd) recently procured, has a postscript which explains 

 that Sangharakkhita Thera, the 'Protected of the Congregation', was 

 Moggallana, the learned Pali Grammarian and Lexicographer, who 

 nourished in Ceylon towards the close of the twelfth century, and that 

 he was also known as Medhankara of Udumbaragiri, the glomerous fig- 

 tree hill. Moreover, it appears elsewhere, that he was the disciple of 

 the distinguished Sariputta, who adopted the title Sila Thera. Moggallana 

 appears to have carried his literary activity with him into the cloister ; for 

 under his priestly title of Sangharakkhita he wrote the following treatises, 

 of which the two first are in verse — 



1. SubodlialanTcdra, ' Easy Rhetoric. ' 



2. Vuttodaya, l Exposition of Metre.' 



3. KhuddasiJchlid Tiled, a gloss in prose on Dhammasiri's Khuddd- 

 siJckhd, ' Minor duties' (incumbent on a priest). 



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