The Dhammapada: A New English Translation with the Pali Text, and the First English Translation of the Commentary's Explanation of the Verses with Notes

A Scholarly Dhammapada

The Dhammapada is a deeply-inspiring religious text and the best-known work of the Theravada Buddhist canon. It consists of 423 short verses arranged in 26 chapters which cover, in brief form, the major aspects of the Buddha's teachings from the most mundane to the deepest. About 25 percent of the verses appear elsewhere in the Theravada Buddhist canon. In many Buddhist countries, children memorize this text which has much to teach both the learned and the simple. In its combination of simplicity and depth, the closest analogue to the Dhammapada in the Jewish-Christian Scriptures is the book of Psalms.

The Dhammapada has been well-served by many excellent translations. The translation under review here, by John Ross Carter, Professor of Philosophy at Colgate University, and Mahinda Palhawandana, Professer of Sanskrit Emeritus in Sri Lanka, is unique in its care and in the scope of its learning. In addition to the text, this translation includes line-by-line translations of the earliest Sri Lankan commentaries on the Dhammapada. These commentaries were written over the course of many centuries and systematized in about 1000 A.D. There is a separate and later series of commentaries on the text in which stories were written to illustrate the events that gave rise to the Buddha's utterance of each verse. These stories are not included here, but they are summarized in another well-known translation of the Dhammapada by the monk Narada, which I shall mention below.

This edition begins with a scholarly introduction to the text and the commentaries followed by an English rendition of the text of the Dhammapada without commentary. The next section of the book repeats the English translation together with the Pali text with the addition of the extensive commentary. Each chapter is arranged in accordance with the commentarial arrangement in which some verses are considered singly and others are combined in groups. Following the translation of text and commentary, there is a series of notes. Some of these notes deal with points of grammar while others describe in detail points of Buddhist teaching to illuminate the text and commentary.

The goal of this detailed presentation is to make the Dhammapada and its ancient interpretations available so that the interested reader may study the text with his or her own eyes. As Carter and Palihawanana state in their introduction (p. 9):

"It was our endeavor to make this work as much as possible a 'stitching of the centuries'. What this reveals is on the one hand the profoundly evocative power of the religious sentiments expressed in the text, and on the other the conservatism of the tradition that interprets the text as we see in these documents. ... But from the way we set about it, what is of singular importance is the arrangement of this book: presenting the text itself as a text and presenting the history of its study in the setting of a growing tradition of interpretation....We wanted to make the text, as something in human hands, to point forward from the past through present into the future."

I want to give two brief examples from the translation. First, verse 183 of the Dhammapada is universally regarded as offering the shortest, most basic statement of the Buddha's teaching. Here it is in Carter and Palihawadana:

"Refraining from all that is detrimental,

The attainment of what is wholesome,

The purification of one's mind:

This is the instruction of Awakened Ones."

Note how the translation avoids the use of the word "bad" in line one and "good" in line two. Many might question this. But the point of this translation is to avoid the theistic connotations many Western readers will bring to the words "good" and "bad". Also note the term "Awakened Ones" in the final line rather than the more literal and traditional translation, "all the Buddhas". The difference points in the direction of universalizing the teaching rather than, perhaps, limiting it by sectarianism.

I want to look briefly at verse 1 of the Dhammapada which is basic to much of what follows in the text. It is also perhaps the most difficult verse in the work. Here it is in Carter and Palihawadana:

"Preceded by perception are mental states,

For them is perception supreme,

From perception have they sprung.

If, with perception polluted, one speaks or acts,

Thence suffering follows

As a wheel the draught ox's foot."

Most translation of verse 1 speak in terms of "the mind." Thus, Narada translates the beginning of the verse: "Mind is the forerunner of (all evil) states. Mind is chief: mind-made are they." ... Carter and Palihawadana try to present the text in a way that will not encourage the Western reader to equate it with the idealism of Plato or Berkeley. The verse remains a difficult and deep teaching on any reading.

I have the good fortune to participate in a Sutta Study Group where we read the Dhammapada chapter-by-chapter over the course of about one year. We used Carter and Palihawadana together with several other translations, as we discussed and debated and tried to understand the Dhammapada together.

The reader may not by lucky enough to have access to such a group, but the Dhammapada is a work that will reward individual study at any level. Some readers may find Carter and Palihawandana more than they need to begin. But for those wanting to make a detailed study of this great text, this work is invaluable.

Robin Friedman