Digha Nikaya, Volume 1

I have added to BuddhaDust the T.W. Rhys Davids translations of Digha Nikaya I which is in the Public Domain (I got and am using it with permission from the Pali Text Society anyway).

This is considered by many to be the beginning of the Buddhist Cannon.

If one holds in mind as one reads the suttas the statement made by the Beggars at the beginning of the Brahmagala Sutta:

'How wonderful a thing is it, brethren, and how strange that the Blessed One, he who knows and sees, the Arahat, the Buddha Supreme, should so clearly have perceived how various are the inclinations of men! For see how while Suppiya the mendicant speaks in many ways in dispraise of the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the Order, his own disciple young Brahmadatta, speaks, in as many ways, in praise of them. So do these two, teacher and pupil, follow step by step after the Blessed One and the company of the brethren, giving utterance to views in direct contradiction one to the other.'

...it paints a panorama which is a very thrilling way of binding together the whole.

Whether or not this is the beginning of the suttas, it is a good way to begin the study of the Suttas, as most of the important ideas in the system are covered at one point or another in this volume.

Another benefit of this work is that the footnotes often disucss the meanings of the Pali terms used and thus provide a way for the reader to introduce himself to the Pali language.

Altogether this is one that anyone who is studying Pali Buddhism would do well to have read.

Contents:

#1: The Perfect Net

#2: The Fruits of the Life of a Recluse

#3: The Ambattha Sutta

#4: The Sonadanda Sutta

#5: The Kutadanta Sutta

#6: The Mahali Sutta

#7: Jaliya Sutta

#8: Mahasihanada Sutta

#9: The Potthapada Sutta

#10: Subha Sutta

#11: Kevaddha Sutta

#12: Lohikka Sutta

#13: Knowledge of the Vedas

The individual suttas are also listed in the Sutta Index which has links to ATI versions and page references to printed versions from the PTS and Wisdom Pubs.

I have also put up Rhys David's Preface to this Volume.

Some people find the language used by the early translators to be out of date; some prefer Walshe's^[1] more recent version (which does have the advantage of being more readily available). I find the difference between Walshe and Rhys Davids hardly noticeable.

I would like to suggest that what we are talking about is a manner of rendering the way people spoke some 2500 years ago (if we were just speaking about setting down the system in modern terms we would not need the suttas). My position is that on the one hand the British scholars use abstract words where our modern slang actually comes closer to the words we get in the Pali, but that the manner of presenting those words is likely more accurate the farther back in time we go in our own language, and that the British scholars use of the English language reflects an older style than that used in America today (Thursday, February 13, 2003 8:40 AM).

In any case another issue is more important: it is vital in the case of translation, that the reader get numerous perspectives on this work.^[2] There is tremendous value here also, in the introductions and footnotes of this work...we can see that in nearly every case that Rhys Davids has raised an issue, it has become necessary, in subsequent translations, to deal with that same issue.

Here in this preface, we also get a look into the picture at a time when the Pali was only first being discovered by Western Scholars...the very beginning of our story as it were.

Dialogues of the Buddha, Volume I, Translated from the Pali by T.W. Rhys Davids, Preface to Volume 1: Note on the Probable Age of the Dialogues

^[1]Wisdom Publications, Walshe, The Long Discourses of the Buddha

^[2]Just an aside on the idea of numerous perspectives: A phenomena I have noticed over the years reading various translations and doing various translations of my own is that when an earnest effort is made to do an accurate translation, no matter how inaccurate specific terms may end up proving to be, the whole is almost always some kind of statement or advice that is worth listening to...a related phenomena, I believe, to that where, when the Buddha spoke, everyone in his audience believed he was speaking directly to them...had tailored his words specifically for their ears.

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