1838.] Pali Buddhistical Annals 689 



the Ldt inscriptions, before the result of your own labors reached me, 

 was made exclusively at your request. 



The task I have assigned for myself on the present occasion is free 

 from every embarrassment but the embarras de richesse, arising out of 

 the necessity of selecting from, and condensing, my superabundant 

 materials, to adapt them for your Journal. In accordance with the 

 plan hitherto pursued by me, I limit myself to furnishing literal 

 translations, unaccompanied by any further observations from myself 

 than are indispensably necessary for the due comprehension of the 

 passages quoted either from the Pkakattayan or the Atthakathd. 



Buddhists, as I have already stated, maintain that all they possess of 

 historical data to the date of the third convocation are either the con- 

 temporaneous history of Sakya and his disciples, or the revelations of 

 anterior events disclosed by the power of inspiration with which they 

 were endowed. My first extracts, therefore, will be explanatory of this 

 power, which is designated the Pubbcniwdsandnan. 



As it is also a tenet of their faith, not only that the world is destroy- 

 ed and reproduced after the lapse of certain, to us, undefinable periods, 

 but ^that even during the existence of each creation, or kappo, the con- 

 dition of man undergoes such changes as to reduce the term of human 

 life, from the incalculable asanhheyyan to ten years, accompanied like- 

 wise by a proportionate deterioration of the mental faculties ; and as 

 such a deterioration invariably intervenes between the advents of any 

 two Buddha, though manifested in the same kappo, expressly in order 

 that revelation, and revelation alone, may connect the histories of the 

 preceding with each subsequent Buddho — my second series of ex- 

 tracts will consist of those passages of these revelations which are de- 

 scriptive of the destruction and reproduction of the universe and of man- 

 kind, both generally, and, in somewhat greater detail, as regards the 

 last creation of the world. 



Thirdly and lastly, the extracts will contain an abridged notice of 

 the three Buddha of this kappo who preceded Sakya, and a fuller 

 account of Sakya himself to the period of his delivering the discourses 

 contained in the section called the Buddhawanso, the commentary 

 on which chiefly furnishes my extracts. 



When these points have been placed before those who take an inter- 

 est in this inquiry, in the light in which they are regarded by Buddhists 

 themselves, the scope and design of the parties who compiled the annals 

 from which all our data are derived, are less likely to be misunderstood. 



Wherever an isolated passage of the Pitakattay ah is found to contain 

 the information sought in an integral form, the preference has always 

 4 r 2 



