JOURNAL 



OF 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. 83.— November, 1838. 



I. — An examination of the Pali Buddhistical Annals, No. 4. By the 

 Horible George Turnour, Esq. Ceylon Civil Service. 



An Analysis of the Dipawanso. 

 The design of my last article was to prove, that the chronological 

 authenticity of the Buddhistical records was intentionally deranged or 

 destroyed at the period of Sakya's advent. In entering now upon the 

 examination of that portion of the Pali annals, which professes to 

 contain the genealogy of the royal dynasties of India, from the last 

 regeneration of the world to the manifestation of Got a mo I have to 

 adduce in my own case another instance, to be added to the many already 

 on record, of the erroneous and exaggerated estimates, into which 

 orientalists may be betrayed in their researches, when they rely on the 

 information furnished by Indian pandits, without personally analizing 

 the authorities, from which that information is alleged to be obtained. 

 I should, however, be doing the Buddhist priesthood of the present day 

 in Ceylon very great injustice, if I did not at the same time avow, that 

 the too favorable expectations in which I have indulged, as to the 

 continuity, after having fully convinced myself of the chronological 

 extravagancies, of the Pali genealogical annals anterior to the sixth 

 century before the birth of Christ, have in no degree been produced by 

 wilful misrepresentations on their part. It has been already noticed* 

 by me elsewhere, that the study of the Pali language is confined, 

 among the natives of Ceylon, almost entirely to the most learned among 

 the priesthood, and is prosecuted solely for the purpose of acquiring a 

 higher order of qualification, for their sacerdotal functions, than those 

 priests possess, who can consult only the vernacular versions of their 

 * Introduction to the Mah&wanso. 

 5 z 



