920 Pali Buddhistical Annals. [Nov. 



scriptures. Their attention, therefore, is principally devoted to the 

 examination of the doctrinal and religious questions contained in their 

 sacred books ; and that study is moreover conducted in a spirit of im- 

 plicit faith and religious reverence, which effectually excludes searching 

 scrutiny, and is almost equally unfavorable to impartial criticism. The 

 tone of confidence with which my native coadjutors sought in the 

 Pitakattayan for the several ' resolves' or ' predictions' of Buddho 

 which are alluded to in a former paper*, and the frankness of the 

 surprise they evinced, when they found that none of those ' resolves' 

 were contained in the Pitakattayan, and only some of them in the 

 Atthakathd, preclude the possibility of my entertaining any suspicion 

 of wilful deception being practised. Confiding in their account of the 

 historical merits of Buddhaghoso's commentaries, which appeared to 

 me to be corroborated by the frequency of the reference made in 

 the Tikd of the Mahdivanso to those Atthaktlhu, for details not 

 afforded in the Tikd, I had impressed myself with the persuasion, that 

 the Atthakathd thus referred to were Buddhaghos's Pali commen- 

 taries. Great, as may be readily imagined, was our mutual disappoint- 

 ment, when after a diligent search, persevered in by the priests, with a 

 zeal proportioned to the interest they took in the inquiry, we were 

 compelled to admit the conviction that Buddiiaghoso in translating 

 the Sihala (Singhalese) Atthakathd into Pali, did not preserve the 

 Indian genealogies in a connected and continuous form. He is found 

 to have extracted only such detached parts of them, as were useful for 

 the illustration of those passages of the Pitakattayan, on which, in the 

 course of his compilation, he might be commenting. He himself says 

 in his Atthakathd on the Dighanikdyo\, " for the purpose of illustrat- 

 ing this commentary, availing myself of the Atthakathd, which was 

 in the first instance authenticated by the five hundred Arahantd at 

 the first convocation, as well as subsequently at the succeeding 

 convocations, and which were thereafter brought (from Mdgadha) 

 to Sihala by the sanctified Mahindo, and for the benefit of the inha- 

 bitants of Sihala were transposed into the Sihala language, from 

 thence I translated the Sihala version into the delightful (classical) 

 language, according to the rules of that (the Pali) language, which 

 is free from all imperfections ; omitting only the frequent repetition of 

 the same explanations, but at the same time, without rejecting 

 the tenets of the theros resident at the Mahawiharo (at 

 Anuradhapura J , who were like unto luminaries to the generation of 



* Journal for September, J 837. 

 f Vide Journal of July, 1837. 



