The Life And Work Of Buddhaghosa Classic Reprint

Author : Pe Maung Tin
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331913399
Total Pages : 106 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (133 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Path of Purity, Vol. 1 written by Pe Maung Tin and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-20 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Path of Purity, Vol. 1: Being a Translation of Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga The present volume is a translation of the first part of Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga, the famous treatise which was, as is believed, written in Ceylon in the beginning of the fifth century a.d. Professor Lanman of Harvard University published an admirable analysis of this first part in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. xlix, No. 3, August, 1913. Since then ten years have passed by without our seeing the long-hoped-for American edition of the text or its translation. The Pali d104 Society, which all along felt the need of a European edition of this work, could wait no longer, and recently brought out their own edition of the text. So, on the assurance of the editor, Mrs. Rhys Davids, that she saw no prospect of an American translation, I submitted my translation to the Pali d104 Society. As has been explained in the Editorial Note to my translation of the Atthasalini, if I had not entertained from year to year good hopes of seeing Professor Lanman's edition and translation, I would have taken up, six years ago, the translation of the Visuddhimagga instead of the Atthasalini. In the Afterword to her scholarly edition of the Visuddhimagga, Mrs. Rhys Davids has said what she had to say about the book and its author. I especially appreciate her useful list of quotations in the book from canonical and other works. I will here touch upon just one point. The Visuddhimagga makes reference (see Index) to the Commentaries on the Anguttara, Majjhima, and Samyutta. To those unacquainted with the history of the Commentaries it would thus seem that the Visuddhimagga was written later than these Commentaries. But, on the other hand, it is quoted by just these Commentaries on the Nikayas as well as by the Samantapasadika and Atthasalini, and is therefore earlier than these works. For instance, the Majjhima Commentary, which is being edited for the Pali d104 Society by Professor James H. Woods, refers to it by name. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.